Babaevsky Elite 75% dark chocolate bar

This chocolate bar comes to me courtesy of a Russian friend who went home over the holidays and ever so kindly brought me back some awesome souvenirs. In addition to this very large (200 gram) chocolate bar, she also brought me back tea and a Gzhel pottery rocking horse. I couldn't be more delighted, so my review may be tainted... but, probably not. The truth is that I love European candy. It is usually stuff from Western Europe, but Eastern Europe is good, too. I have great friends. I really do.

It's always a bit of a trick for me to track down information on food I get from countries other than Japan, but the company that makes this, Babaevsky, has been around since 1804. I've read that Russians regard this as a very nostalgic treat. I'm guessing it is their equivalent of Hershey's, only, you know, without the low quality that now comes along with America's best known "chocolate" bar. Babaevsky chocolate has, apparently, won many international candy contests.

With all of that positive press to live up to, I had reasonably high expectations of this bar. Since I'm not an enormous fan of dark chocolate, it's sometimes hard to please me on this front. I'm okay with it being bitter, but not too bitter, and I hate it when the bitterness is compensated for by being too sweet. Trader Joe's dark chocolate bar has been one of the few that has kept me happy, though I rarely partake of it much these days.

Because this is dark chocolate, the bar doesn't have much of a sheen on it and the finish is quite dry. The ingredients list is "cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa powder, cocoa butter", emulsifiers, and artificial vanilla flavor. I didn't know what "cocoa mass" was before, but apparently it is the "brown stuff" in cocoa. The white stuff is cocoa butter - that is what makes white chocolate. I'm guessing cocoa mass is used to up the level of cocoa to 75%, and using more of it is the reason this is so dry. However, I'm engaging in idle chocolate speculation here. I really don't know.

What I do know is this bar is not too sweet and not too bitter. It has a fruity aroma which registers when you eat the bar as cherry notes. It's complex enough to be an interesting nosh, but intense enough to satisfy with one square (each block is about 60 calories depending on how you manage to break it off). As dark chocolates go, I really liked this one because it didn't leave the same sort of unpleasant aftertaste that Japanese bars do and it wasn't too strong on the coffee notes. It also didn't have the sense that one was coming very close to eating baking chocolate and actually eating candy - adult, sophisticated candy, but something decadent nonetheless.

I really like this and would welcome a steady supply. I'd rate it as equally good to the dark chocolate at Trade Joe's, but with much nicer complexity and flavor depth. Amazon sells some Babaevsky dark chocolate, though not this particular bar. If you can try it though, I'd say it is well worth your hard-earned cash, especially if you like dark chocolate, and I'm not just saying that because the origin of this gift was a special one for me.

Ritter Sport Dark Chocolate Marzipan

My quest for marzipan continues on. Some day, I'm sure that I can make a movie about my epic adventures in purchasing various packages of marzipan, photographing them, opening them up, breaking them into pieces, taking photographs of those pieces, and then tasting them. The tension in the movie can come from the point at which I frown in concentration and scan through my digital photos and fail to find my photos. The resolution to the drama comes when I hunt down a standard PR picture and use that instead of expiring at the grief of having misplaced my photos again. I'm sure it'll be a box office smash.

I realize that the Ritter Sport line is pretty common and many people probably have more experience with it than I do. In fact, it seems to be marketed worldwide since I even saw it in Japanese convenience stores in Tokyo. Oddly, despite my love of European chocolates (this is made in Germany), I remember only buying one of these once in my 23 years in Tokyo and I have no idea what flavor it was. The only thing I can say was that it was not marzipan. When I ran across this bar for a mere $1.49 at "Discount Grocery Outlet" (a quality establishment), I knew that the time had come to continue my slow and tasty journey into the world of consumer-level marzipan chocolate.

I had better expectations of this bar than previous ones because I figured the dark chocolate would compliment the sweet marzipan filling. I figured that it would add a balance without detracting from the almond flavored filling. And, I was right. The marzipan was just sweet enough without being overbearing and the coating complimented it well. The chocolate kept the marzipan nice and moist.

The only thing I didn't like about this was that I'd have preferred a higher ratio of almond paste to chocolate. I'm not even sure if that is possible, but I think my hope springs eternal. Perhaps someone needs to cater to people like me by wrapping the marzipan in oblaat. Okay, that sounds a bit gross even to me even though it shouldn't.

I wouldn't say this is better than my other adventures in consumer-level shelf-stable marzipan, but I would say it's just as good. It's also cheaper and more accessible than other versions. I'd certainly buy it again, and I think it's very good quality for the price point and target market.

Morinaga Dars Bitter Chocolate

The way in which our tastes develop is something I've expounded upon on multiple occasions. I do this because I get royally fatigued at the notion that the tastes of one nation are somehow more evolved than those of another. Since I spent 23 years in Japan, I had more than my share of dietary comparisons based on the perceived American diet (burgers, shakes, fries, Coke, hot dogs, and pizza) and the perceived Japanese one (sushi, rice, miso soup, fish, vegetables). 

The reality of the former is that it's not as dire and destructive as people think and that of the latter is that it's not nearly the nutritional Superman that people seem to think it is. The truth rests somewhere in the middle, of course, and any individual's diet will vary. I know that I had to say again and again to my students that, NO, I do not like hamburgers or steak, and, NO, I do not eat fast food. I hate fast food. The truth is that I didn't grow up eating fast food since my family was so poor. That was back in the old days when fast food actually cost more than food that was considered healthy.

Since I grew up with so little fast food, I never developed a strong taste for it. And, after all, as I've said far too many times before (and I'm sorry to bore my audience who deserves better), we like what we grew up with and what we become acclimated to. That's probably why some of my lovely readers will sample something I liked and hate it. My tastes got rewired in Japan to some extent.

When it comes to the training of the taste buds, the Japanese are much more acclimated to bitter flavors. I'm guessing this is because their cuisine incorporates more of them and this gets their palates accustomed to them earlier and with greater frequency than the average 'merkan. This is one way to explain the popularity of goya and various dishes prepared with it.

This also explains why Dars would release a "bitter" chocolate variety. I'm sampling it not because I like bitter flavors (as I'm a sissy American), but because it is Dars, the darling of the Japanese chocolate industry in my eyes. Frankly, as I've gotten older, I've also learned to enjoy darker chocolate and stronger flavors more. I'm guessing this is because of neurological diseases or wilting of my once perceptive taste buds or some such age-related decay. It's best to simply accept that you're going with grace and just be glad that you have a higher chance of enjoying food that you wouldn't have found palatable when you were young and full of yourself.

When I first tried this, I wasn't entirely keen, but the second round (delivered in two-square bursts) hit me a lot more favorably. The chocolate isn't intensely bitter, but it definitely has an edge to it and is a bit strong. It's not really proper dark chocolate, but it's closer to it than most consumer-level offerings of such. The main benefit, as is always the case with Dars, is its creamy, fatty nature which will unfold if you are patient enough to hold one of these little squares on your tongue and allow it to slowly melt. If you just gobble it down, well, then you're missing half of the reason to have these instead of some other dark chocolate.

I liked this because it was potent without being unpleasantly intense. There is just enough sweetness for a dark chocolate sissy like me to enjoy it and the texture, as always, was creamy when warmed in the mouth, but had a nice snap when I bit into it. Each square is about 20 calories, and you get 12 servings (Dars = doz, as in dozen). I paid about $2.20 for this at Nijiya Supermarket, and I think it was well worth it. If you're hardcore about dark chocolate, this probably won't do the trick for you and if you are strictly a milk chocolate devotee, this may also fall short. If you're somewhere in the middle, you can come join me on the bitter dark side of Dars. 

Lotte Black Ghana

Ages ago, I did a comparison of all of the basic chocolate bars in Japan. The three basic bars from the big confectioner's are Lotte's Ghana, Meiji, and Morinaga. I rated Ghana the highest, though for basic chocolate, I think "Vessel in the Fog" and Dars are the best. Vessel in the Fog, incidentally, has reappeared in shops with the end of summer. It is often hard to get, but worth picking up if you see it. Given my favoring of Ghana's basic chocolate bar, this looked intriguing.

The types of snacks (especially gum) that are sold in this type of packaging are generally more expensive than those sold in paper and foil wrappers or cardboard boxes. I'm not sure if that's because they are supposed to be better value, or if you're paying for the plastic. Either way, they generally do not represent better value than buying such things in other packaging even when you consider the increased volume. For this reason, I tend to avoid these, but I found these on sale at Okashi no Machioka snack shop for a mere 129 yen ($1.67) and decided to give it a go.

Black Ghana is a small (82 gram/2.9 oz.) canister of 38 cube-shaped pellets. The whole lot is 482 calories so one piece is 13 calories. This is reasonable for the portion size. The advertising boasts "extra cacao", so this is supposed to be richer than regular Ghana. That's the selling point that lured me in. What it is is a semi-dark chocolate with a high fat content. It's a little more intense than a milk chocolate, but not as bitter as a true dark chocolate.

I'm not a dark chocolate fan, but this blend was pretty much right where I would enjoy darker chocolate. It comes up just short of being too bitter and could be seen as a version which is approachable for milk chocolate fans. It's still stronger and more intense than regular Ghana, and it still has a familiar Japanese chocolate aftertaste (kind of like how your mouth feels after drinking coffee), but I liked these and I'd buy them again.

"Adult Sweetness" KitKat

There are so many jokes a reviewer could make about an "adult" KitKat in terms of marital aids, pornography, etc., but as someone who has been an adult for a long time, I'd say that there are bigger realities associated with adulthood. I'm talking about things like paying taxes, being fully responsible for any crimes you commit willfully or unwittingly (not that I've ever committed a crime...), and realizing that you are neither immortal nor invincible. If eating this KitKat conveyed the sense of your own mortality, it'd truly be "adult".

In the end though, this KitKat is a brilliant example of what most Japanese KitKats are these days; they are the product of a better team of marketers and graphic designers than creative cooks. The thing that makes this "adult" is that it isn't supposed to be as sweet as most KitKats. This is achieved solely through using a very mild dark chocolate coating instead of a milk chocolate one. If you are a fan of dark chocolate that gives you an intense hit, this isn't a bar for you. It's the sort of dark chocolate flavor that cocoa sissies can find palatable.

When I opened the package, the scent reminded me of the sort of dark chocolate that I used to get at Halloween time in the form of a Hershey's  miniature that someone tossed in my trick-or-treat bag. It tasted good, which is to say that it tastes like a KitKat with marginally less sweet dark chocolate. It's really such a subtle variation on the classic presentation that it's hardly worth noting.

If you like KitKats, you'll like this. It's good and costs the same as all Japanese KitKats (120 yen ($1.43) in convenience stores, 100 yen ($1.19) at Okashi no Machioka, where I got mine), but I would avoid it at all costs if you're considering paying a premium price for one via an importer. It's simply not interesting enough to pay more for. That being said, if you're living in Japan, it's about 5% more interesting than a regular KitKat and worth picking up as a change of pace.

Jun Hit Choco Ice Milk Bar

It's amazing how easily suckered in we are by packaging. The same product that we have overlooked a hundred times may go into the shopping basket if it is swaddled in new wrapping. A product that we might overlook draws out attention because of the way the label is designed. I think this "Jun Hit Choco" ice milk bar suckered me in both with the silly name ("Jun Hit"? It sounds like a pop star... ) and the large blocks of chocolate all over it.

Hyphenation clearly is a bit of a challenge.

The label also promises me that they have used only "the finest quality chocolate". I'm sure that that's the truth. After all, it's not like a snack food manufacturer would lie to a consumer about the quality of the ingredients in order to entice her to purchase it.

I picked this up for 100 yen ($1.09) at a local 7-11. It's an 80 ml. (2.7 oz.) bar and only 120 calories. The size is on the generous side, particularly for the caloric impact. The company that makes this is called Andeico, and this is my first review of one of their products. They make frozen treats as well as chilled baked items like chou cream (french pastry shells filled with custard or whipped cream) and puddings and yogurt. Their forte appears to be cold treats. The company was established in 1946 and their motto is something along the lines of, "we will never produce non-quality items." It's a rather small company with only 346 employees, and that may be one of the reasons I have never seen any of their products before. It's hard for smaller companies to get shelf space compared to bigger ones.

When I removed the bar from the package, I smelled nothing and a closer sniff also didn't yield much olfactory pleasure. The bar is very, very dark in color. My immediate sense was that it was going to be like a Fudgesicle, but I've been fooled before by Japanese ice milk bars with hard outer shells and surprises lurking within. It turns out that this actually is a "Fudgesicle-like" bar that is the same texture and substance through and through. It's easy to lick or suck on and doesn't melt too quickly. It softens and gets pleasantly easier to draw into your mouth.

The taste was very strong. It is intense, deep dark chocolate with bittersweet undertones with the right level of sweetness to make it palatable. One of the ingredients is coffee and, though you can't detect it in the bar, it likely helps develop and enhance the chocolate flavor. This was immensely flavorful in a way that was deeply satisfying for me, though it may be off-putting for people who dislike dark or bittersweet chocolate.

If you want something which is chocolate and has flavor "teeth", I can't recommend this bar enough. It's strong, but good. This bar lives up to Andeico's motto about quality. If you're the type who only enjoys milky chocolate or muted chocolate, this is going to be a bit much for you, but I favor milk chocolate and still loved this. I'll definitely buy it again if it remains in the freezer case at 7-11.

KitKat Mild Bitter Mini (Okashi no Machioka exclusive)

In last Friday's post on Okashi no Machioka, I mentioned that there is an exclusive KitKat for sale at their shops. This is that very number. I do wonder just how "exclusive" it is, and whether or not it may show up at other outlets. It's certainly possible that the Machioka people will sell their stock to others. I guess it's also possible that the people who re-sell Japanese items to foreigners can buy up some of these and offer them. If any of my readers see these at other shops or can acquire them through mail order, please leave a comment and let me know.


As for the candy itself, I had seen it on a previous visit, but skipped it because of the necessity of buying 14 mini bars for a sampling. When it comes to minis, I usually try and locate a single one being sold at convenience stores for 40 yen. Since this is an exclusive, there was no chance of that, so I picked up a bag for 279 yen ($3.10) at Okashi no Machioka, and hoped that it was going to be enjoyable.


Each bar is 12.3 grams (.43 oz.) and 66 calories. Two fingers of these short mini fingers are about the same size as 1.4 regular KitKat fingers. The chocolate coating on these seems firmer, more brittle and flakes more easily than other types of KitKats. This is likely because there is less butterfat, milk, or milk products in the darker chocolate coating. This also means that they melt less readily than other types of KitKats I've encountered in Japan.

The smell is of dark chocolate, though it's not a deep scent. The bars are crispy and the chocolate has a nice snap. The chocolate coating sits cooler on your tongue than milk chocolate. The flavor is a very mild dark chocolate flavor with so little bitterness that I'm not sure that these have earned the name "mild bitter". They are actually mild dark chocolate rather than bittersweet, and that suits me just fine as I am not a fan of strong dark chocolate.

While I really liked the combination of the wafers, cream and mild dark chocolate, I think some people may find these to be too little variation on the regulation milk chocolate bar. The main benefit of this is that the chocolate flavor is a little more pronounced, the bar a bit less fatty, and the texture crisper. It's quite a tasty KitKat, much as plain KitKats are, so I wouldn't hesitate to buy it again. I'm just not sure I can recommend that anyone else go out of their way to track it down or pay more for it as an import.

Tirol Gundam Chocolates

Gundam is one of those parts of Japanese culture that I constantly see, but never read about. Every Japan blogger in Tokyo has taken pictures of the giant Gundam robot that was set up somewhere in the city, and many reported on the marriage that was done near the robot statue thingy.

For those who are as ignorant of Gundam as I was before I had to research for this post, it's an animated series about big ass robots. It's so integrated into Japanese culture that it has been featured on postage stamps. It is brought to us by the same people who created Godzilla. Gundam has always struck me as a real male interest type of thing, but what do I know? There may be legions of female fans out there who find all of the potent phallic imagery of guns and tall, erect robots appealing.

Displays for Tirol Gundam candies have been showing up in 7-11 convenience stores and I decided to sample one of each flavor. The picture above is of just two of the package designs. There are far more pictures, but only two types of candy. One is American cherry and the other is "white and coffee". I'm sure Gundam fans might want to collect all of the wrappers, but I'm really just interested in the candy itself. These are Tirol premium size candies that cost about 40 yen each and are 1 inch (2.54 cm) square in size.

White and Coffee:


I refrigerated my candies and the white chocolate and coffee one fragmented rather badly when I cut it in half for a picture. It's a pretty straightforward candy made up of white chocolate full of little coffee bean fragments.You can really smell the coffee when you give it a whiff. The white chocolate is soft and sweet and the coffee beans are crunchy and bitter, as one would expect. Despite being a simple combination, it's actually pretty good. The sweetness of the white chocolate is offset well by the strength and harshness of the coffee flavors. This one is 64 calories, which makes it about 10 calories more than the average Tirol premium chocolate.


American cherry:


The American cherry is filled with a sticky, thick cherry jelly. It smells a lot like Cellas chocolate-covered cherries. The chocolate is dark and bitter and the center is sweet, but not overly sweet, cherry flavoring. There's no alcohol flavoring like many chocolate covered cherry confections. The combination is intense, but good. The chocolate dominates just enough to keep any cough syrup notes in the cherry center well at bay. This chocolate was 54 calories.

Of the two, clearly, the cherry is better for me. I love chocolate covered cherries and used to get a box of them every year for Christmas. I might stock up on several of these as a substitute and keep them in my refrigerator for the holidays. I think these are both very good consumer chocolates. I like that both have high contrast flavors and think that fans of either coffee bean candies or cherry chocolates might enjoy them.

Nescafe Happy Pack w/Raspberry & Passionfruit KitKat

Nestlé loves you. No, really, it does. If you don't believe me, buy this Nescafé "Happy Pack" because it's their valentine to you. You can tell by the fact that they have plastered hearts all over everything. In fact, I'm sure that they would have made a heart-shaped KitKat to put inside of it had it not defied the laws of nature and snacking.


Even the insert in the box is shaped like a heart that you unfold. Nestlé knows that you'll be more receptive to their promotional materials if they give them to you in a geographic shape which expresses the company's affection for you.


The "Happy Pack" showed up at a local discount snack store for 168 yen (about $1.70). It includes 3 packets of flavored instant coffee and 3 mini size passionfruit and raspberry KitKats. Each mini bar has about the same amount of candy as 1.5 fingers of a conventional KitKat. I'll admit that I mainly bought this for the KitKats, and, to do justice to them, I need to rate the box's contents separately.


The three types of flavored instant coffee are green tea, orange and caramel latte, and café latté. I drank the café latté only. I'll admit that up front. I sent the green tea one to Marvo at the Impulsive Buy (along with one of the KitKats) and the orange one is still sitting around. I was very careful to prepare the coffee precisely as the directions state. That is, I carefully measured out the 130 ml. of water that was required. It was thick and foamy, but so very bland. It tasted just like regular, blah, instant coffee, weak and inoffensive, with too little coffee and too much powdered milk. The thing that is keeping me away from the last packet is the fact that this stuff is just full of corn syrup, and it doesn't taste sweet.

Because I would definitely not buy the instant coffee portion of this again, I'm giving the coffee an appropriately low rating.




The mini raspberry passionfruit KitKats mainly smell like raspberry. The outside of them is noticeably darker than the usual KitKat bar and has a nice bittersweet chocolate flavor. It complements the berry flavor very nicely and is also a nice mix with the limited sweetness of the passionfruit. If there is anything about this to complain about, it'd be that the raspberry completely overwhelms the passionfruit for the most part.

Because I'm not a super great fan of bittersweet chocolate, I can't really give this a very happy rating, but if I could buy these bars without the lame instant coffee, I'd definitely get them again. I think people who are fans of darker chocolate might really go for these and it's certainly one of the nicest fruit KitKats I've ever had.

Lotte Mexican Chocolate

A few years or so ago, the dark chocolate boom hit Japan. One could find bars which were so bitter that the only way they could be endured was with a sweet drink on the side. In fact, the instructions on some boxes explicitly said that was how the bars should be consumed. The highest concentration dark chocolate bar was 99% and you were eating baking chocolate for all intents and purposes. The benefits of polyphenols in dark dark chocolate set the boom in motion about a half year or so behind the popularity of dark chocolate in the U.S.

Lotte makes a great many of Japan's chocolate bars, both the staple finds and flash-in-the-pan types. At the moment, they have a range of fruit-based bars which I actively avoid since most such things are flavored white chocolate. They also make my favorite all-purpose (read: cheap) milk chocolate bar in Japan, Ghana. Ghana is available for 88 yen in a local market and can be seen as the equivalent of a Hershey bar, albeit with a much higher fat, glossier, and less sour chocolate. That's not an indictment of Hershey's chocolate, mind you. I like the chalkier texture and yogurt-like undertones of Hershey's chocolate, but U.S. chocolate is very different from that in Japan.

I've read good things about Mexican chocolate so I decided to give this bar a try when I saw it in one of the tonier markets in our area. It wasn't cheap at 238 yen ($2.20 USD) for 70 grams (2.46 oz.), but I guess that the good growers of cocoa in Mexico need to be paid a fair wage. Both the front and the back of the box mention that the bar is made with 100% Mexican cocoa beans. The back also tells a little story about how a Mexican man (his face is pictured on the box so you can feel closer to him) named "Barutro-san" (El-Barto?) grows cocoa in the Tabasco region of Mexico. The box doesn't say this, but apparently Tabasco grows 80% of the cocoa beans produced by Mexico.

I find it quaint and very Japanese when I see the portraits of nondescript growers on food packaging. They do this for Japanese farmers as well. Many a time, my tomato packages have been graced by the faces of the men who have no doubt been in charge of the men who worked the fields for those tomatoes.


When I turned the box over and saw the calorie count of 395 calories for this one bar, I was a little shocked as it seemed on the high side. To put that in perspective, I'll tell you that a Hershey bar is 4.8 calories per gram and this bar is 5.6 calories per gram. When I realized that this was a dark chocolate bar, I understood the situation a bit better as tons of sugar is added to off-set the bitterness and more cocoa butter is added to make it smooth. There is also probably more cocoa butter in Japanese chocolate in general, though I can't verify this for a fact. The ingredients list is: Mexican cocoa, sugar, cocoa butter, full-fat powdered milk, milk solids (not sure about this one), flavoring.

The information regarding how dark the chocolate is is given in quite small print and written only on the back. It says that it's 62% cocoa. In almost equally small print (but highlighted in yellow), it also says that there are 1280 mg of polyphenols in the entire bar, but you'd never be able to eat it all in one sitting! Well, I couldn't eat it all at once.

One other interesting thing about the box information is that there is an explanation of "fat bloom" on it. If you don't know what that is, it's when you get a grey or white substance on chocolate from temperature changes. It's perfectly safe, but does tend to make chocolate look less appetizing. I'm guessing that, given the high fat content of the bar and the hot summer, they want consumers not to complain or return the chocolate if bloom is on it. There is a specific recommendation not to store it at temperatures higher than 28 degrees C. (82.4 degrees F.) to help avoid this unpleasant situation.

The first thing I always do with new food is give it a sniff and this chocolate smells exactly like a Ghana bar, perhaps with a somewhat stronger chocolate hint. Despite being a dark bar, it's not like opening a box of cocoa scent-wise. You have to inhale pretty deeply to get any scent at all. Unlike some Western chocolates which you can smell the minute they leave the wrapper, most Japanese chocolates don't have much of a chocolate aura wafting off of them.

The bar has 8 individual blocks and is glossy. I think the smell I associate with Ghana is whatever Lotte does to their bars to make them all similarly shiny and smooth. When you bite into it, the bar has a lot of snap and breaks off very cleanly. It becomes soft on your tongue if you let it rest a short while in your mouth and you can really sense all of the fat in it. It's only a little bitter, though it does leave a bitter aftertaste. Oddly, it seems to hit you in three stages - bitter, sweet, bitter again. The balance of sweetness to intense chocolate/bitterness is actually very good. I'm not a fan of dark chocolate, so I can't say I love this bar. However, I can say that I don't hate it and I often cannot say that of other types of dark chocolate.

I'd say this is a good "gateway" bar for a milk chocolate lover who wants to wean themselves off of the bad stuff and transition to darker chocolate. It's pretty easy to eat dark chocolate and enjoyable, though it's also easy to control yourself and not eat too much at once. If it weren't so expensive, hard to find and very likely short-lived as all Japanese specialty chocolates are, I'd recommend it as a good bar to have around just to have a square or two a day for the health benefits of eating dark chocolate.