Nestle Alpino

By now most people will have seen the Alpino TVC, where a husband makes a big faux pas and then appeases the wife by offering her these chocolates. Mush seems to be the selling point of this new product from the Nestle stables. Also luxury. Nestle India makes its debut in the high end chocolate segment with the introduction of Alpino, which is a centre-filled wafer chocolate.

Also called bonbons, Alpino seems to me as the first real competition to the wildly popular Ferrero Rocher. Similarly packaged in golden colours, the product is meant to exude luxuriousness. Inside the plastic wrapper is a card tray printed with the words "mine" and "ours" upon which sit the two bonbons. On opening the gold foil wrapping, one can find 'love' messages printed on plastic strips.

My pack, as you can see, had these two extremely cheesy lines: "Two of us fit together like these two bonbons in the pack", and "Dogs are for you, cats are for me. This is for us." These remind me of fortune cookies or Dove chocolates (the Indian version is called Galaxy), which have similar messages inside their wrappers.

The chocolate itself is ho-hum. The texture is great, but as always, I find it disappointingly sweet. The sweetness of the milk chocolate overwhelms and takes away all finer points. The taste would have balanced so much better had the centre filling been dark. However, most Indian consumers will find it palatable. What they might not like is the price. Two bonbons, weighing 22 g in all, cost INR 25. But because the product is being positioned as a luxury one, people might just buy into it.

RATING: 3/5

Mars' Twix Cookie Bars

I'm pretty sure the company Mars is aiming at world domination, at least as far as chocolate production is concerned. Every second imported chocolate I pick up turns out to be a Mars product. Can't say I've seen a lot of Twix around in India, but I've 'seen' a lot of it, thanks to global television. And now, because of Chocosophy, I've turned into this compulsive chocolate buyer-eater person and recently picked up a pack of Twix to see what the big deal was all about.

And like an obsessive chocolate blogger, I read about it before I ate it. Never mind my taste experience later, but I was quite blown away by the Twix website. It is most definitely one of the most clever websites (based upon their North American 2012 advertising campaign*) I've ever seen.

So, typically a Twix is a pack of two chocolate-coated biscuit/wafer fingers with some caramel in it. They're called cookie bars and many, many variations and flavours have been made in different countries over the years. Dark chocolate, white chocolate, peanut butter, coconut and coffee (java) are some examples.

Twix also has ice cream bars, which have a milky, creamy filling along with caramel instead of the standard cookie insides. Even Twix ice cream flavours have made a way into the market , showing just how popular they are.

I don't see why, though. I found the classic Twix chocolates to be rather boring. Well, it might have to do with my general dislike of milk chocolate and sticky caramel, but even the whole taste experience is rather underwhelming. Let's say, I feel as much love for Twix as the home-grown 5 Star, which isn't much. I'm definitely not paying INR 50 again for a 58 g Twix pack when I can find similar boring milk chocolate-waffer-caramel combinations much cheaper.


RATING: 2.5/5

Gandour Safari

I've been dreading this post but I must take my newfound role as a chocolate blogger seriously, no? I've hated Safari for as long as I can remember, but a chocolate as 'popular' as this one had to be reviewed. So I brought home the smallest bar I could find to check if it was still as bad as I remembered it.

Safari is a milk chocolate made by Gandour, a Saudi Arabia-based company that's more than a century old! Gandour makes a range of chocolates (which, I'm pretty sure, are as shitty as Safari), and Safari is one of their most recognised products. It's either me or the Saudi nations just DO NOT KNOW HOW TO MAKE CHOCOLATE! Any and every chocolate product that I've tasted from these countries have scored exactly the same points - ZERO.

Safari is no exception. With a wafer and cereal core and caramel layering, the milk chocolate is covered with rice crispies on the top (which look like warts, urgh!). Sweet as hell, ugly to look at and with an all-over-the-place texture, Safari makes for a terrible gustatory experience. Their only saving grace is the packaging. I couldn't finish even this tiny 20g bar that cost me INR 5, and I never waste chocolate. So yeah, Safari retains its position as the yuckiest of chocolates, at least in my book.

RATING: 1/5

Gone Mad Choco Sticks

Yay! This is the first ever brand-request review on Chocosophy (and boy, am I glad that it is a product I don't have to write bad things about).When they sent a mail asking if I would like to review the product, I jumped at it, and they sent me a box-full of these. I wasted no time in opening one and pretending to smoke a cigar! :D

What you notice first is the cute packaging, and you know that GarudaFood's Gone Mad Choco Sticks are those little fun wafer chocolatey things that kids and shameless adult chocoholics will love.In fact, the designs on the packaging have been created by a bunch of school kids from Bangalore!

The wafer of the choco sticks is crunchy and the filling is generous. Stuffed with chocolate, they are well worth their price of INR 5 per stick. What I especially like about them is that the chocolate is not overly sweet. My only grouse is that they break really easily, and if not stored with care, all you get it bits and pieces crumbling out of the packet.

The kind of box I was sent comes with 24 pieces, and is priced at INR 120. A smaller pack of five, costing Rs. 25 is also available. The product is currently being sold only the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, but I don't know why kids from other states shouldn't be able to sample this wonderful wafer chocolate.

RATING: 3/5

Nestle Kit Kat Dark

I was wondering yesterday how I would avoid using this blog as an excuse to buy and eat chocolates everyday. Excited as I am about this baby, I would have to restrict myself to one review (hence, one chocolate) every three days, I thought. But the Universe obviously had plans to foil my efforts in the gym in the morning and it shortchanged me...literally. Running out to work I realised I had only 500 rupee notes in my wallet, and I knew I would have better luck with those notes in Timbucktoo than with Mumbai auto wallahs at 10 am.

So I had to go to a nearby grocer's to buy choc...er, get change. And look, mama, what sneaked into my hands when I wasn't looking. A bar of Nestle KitKat Dark chocolate! I am not the one to pick up wafer chocolates because they're only half chocolate, if you know what I mean. But the word DARK called out to me like cream does a cat.

But at only 40% 'darkness', Nestle's KitKat Dark isn't much of a treat to a chocolate lover partial to this kind. It's not exactly smooth either for those who will not be distracted by the wafer part of it. Unfortunately, the wafer part does not impress either because it doesn't crackle with the crackliness the TVCs promise. Moreover, this 27.5 gm pack has only three fingers, which is horridly inadequate, especially if there are colleagues around looking lovingly at your already tiny bar.

The good thing, however, is the pocket-friendliness of this chocolate. Priced at Rs. 20, it is good for dark chocolate aspirants and better still for weight watchers since 'It is only 40 kcal per finger (9.2g)'.

RATING: 2.5/5