Komforte Chockolates Tortilla, Lime, and Sea Salt Bar

Posted by Edmund in Chocolate, Featured Articles, Gourmet Chocolate Bars, USA | 0 comments

Dec 28, 10

Composition: Milk Chocolate with Fried Tortilla Strips, Lime, and Sea Salt.
Region of Production: USA.
Price: $3.50 for 70g.

This bar looks rather cheap, coming with a simple paper wrapper displaying an unnecessarily long paragraph of details and almost no illustrations. Once you start to open up the package, though, it gets impressive fast, with a sleek jet black paper covering on the interior. The bar itself is nice, too, coming in four large rectangles that are far thicker than most chocolates. Even so, the ingredients don’t protrude from the top surface, which is decorated with an oddly interesting squiggle design. Where the presentation breaks down is on the back, where chunks not only protrude, but give large portions of the bar a dried yellow appearance (the color of the dried lime and fried corn chunks). Just as bad, on the snap the bar ends up with ragged edges, with chunks of yellow jutting out from those edges.

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The chocolate packs a nice punch, though you don’t expect it. The key here is the balance, as everything from the sweetness of the milk chocolate to the salty citrus of the other ingredients tends to be on the subtle side. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the barrage of ingredients, I always felt refreshed and intrigued, looking for just one more bite of something good. The milk chocolate is extremely rich and creamy, and yet it’s never too sweet, even though it feels that the cocoa percentage is very low. Helping it out are a marked oily crunch from the fried corn tortilla strips (reminiscent of corn nuts), while the lime and salt balance out the sweetness and oil with lighter, fresher flavors. The lime is especially nice, though it could have been just a bit stronger. The aftertaste, too, is rather pronounced—something I’d never expect from such a light milk chocolate. The bar leaves you with just a bit of milk and a slightly limey saltiness on the palate. Unfortunately, the aftertaste is very fleeting (though expected of a milk chocolate)

The only problem is in the consistency. The ingredients aren’t distributed all that perfectly, so some bites will be saltier, some oilier (from the fried tortilla strips), and some very limey. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get all three in at the same time, and they tend to hit you at different times and in different layers. The salt proves the biggest problem, becoming overpowering when it comes in full force. Just as bad are the bites where you get almost none of the ingredients. Luckily, the milk chocolate is good enough to carry this bar on its own.

The texture’s another big plus. On the one hand, the milk chocolate is so rich and milky that it goes down like caramel. On the other, the chunks of dried ingredients, especially the tortilla strips, create for a very nice crunch. The chocolate is, unfortunately, rather tough from all those ingredients, and it doesn’t have the greatest snap. Moreover, the caramel-like milk chocolate can cling too much to the mouth.

Overall, this bar just doesn’t have the moderation to give it that extra push to excellence, though the chocolate quality is great, as are the melt and the ingredients used.

Scores

Presentation: 2.0/5.0
Taste: 3.5/5.0
Flavor: 3.0/5.0. Too inconsistent.
Melt/Texture: 4.2/5.0. Very smooth, but very rich.
Length: 1.5/5.0
Value: 4.0/5.0
Verdict: 3.5/5.0