My first stop? The United Arab Emirates, for some of the most diverse, unique cuisine in the region. If you thought Middle Eastern cuisine couldn’t be elegant, then you haven’t visited the Emirates yet. Home to the world’s richest city, Abu Dhabi, and 9% of the world’s oil reserves, this tiny little Gulf state has been drawing the best talent from all across the world for years, making it one of the only stops where you can get a 5-star dining experience from none other than the legendary Pierre Gagnaire, England’s outspoken Gordan Ramsay, and India’s first Michelin-starred chef,  on top of endless dim sum feasts, Lebanon’s most famous fine dining chain, and some of the best Indian food I’ve ever had in my life.

Wow! Extremely good, especially considering this comes from Argentina. It’s not too sweet, which is always a concern with white chocolates, although the sweetness does pick up as you savor the chocolate in your mouth. It’s just very creamy, very milky, and it’s very rich. The melt is fantastic—melts on touch, but it’s smooth, rather than gooey. Just rolling this chocolate around in the mouth is a pleasure, because it’s so milky and well-sweetened.

Overall Score: 4.0/5.0. Probably the best chocolate bar I had in Argentina, period.

Actually, quite a good milk chocolate bar, in comparison to most in Argentine. Very rich, very pure, greatly tempered, and very good melt. It’s also flavorful and creamy. Almond pieces add lots of flavor and blend in well with the bar, balancing the chocolate. Just an all-around excellent bar with almost the right level of sweetness. Just a bit too sweet at times, but still incredibly edible. Biggest problem: horrible value. I would never pay $7.50 for an Argentine milk chocolate bar, when I could get so much better from around Europe, and for cheaper or around the same price.

Viejo Oso does an excellent job with this chocolate. It’s not as good as the white chocolate, but it has a great level of sweetness and rather nice texture. It melts great too—in fact, it melts on the touch and even when you unwrap it if you apply too much pressure. It’s rather creamy, too. As for taste, the flavor is direct, with a strong milk cocoa feel to it, with coffee overtones. Nor is it cloying at all—rather, it verges towards the dark milk chocolate side of the spectrum because of the strength of the cocoa flavor, even if the cocoa percentage isn’t too high. Nice balance overall.

Overall Score: 3.9/5.0. Probably the best milk chocolate bar I had in Argentina.

Not bad. A little too hard, with a bad melt, but the flavor profile is okay. The sweetness is right, which is surprising for Argentine chocolates. It’s almost as good as the milk chocolate from Aguila. Overall, not something I’d buy, especially since it’s more expensive than most Argentine chocolate bars at 8 pesos.

Overall Score: 2.0/5.0

It’s a nice bar, very finely tempered, and it’s as solid as a rock. You need to bite this one—it’s not going to melt on you. It does have a nice munch to it, though, with a sweetness that’s just right and not cloying at all. In fact, the munch/crunchiness is perhaps the best part of this bar, in contrast to much smoother, more elegant, silkier bars, like the Viejo Oso White Chocolate Bar. The only downside, given this bar’s hardness, is its bad melt, and that is why I can’t recommend it even more highly. However, it’s extremely satisfying for a very simple white chocolate bar, though its price ($6) is far from great, especially in Argentine terms.

Overall Score: 4.0/5.0. 3.8 for value.