Notes on chocolate: contrasting bars for when you can’t decide

It is the end of May. I don’t know what I want, chocolate wise. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, bits in my chocolate? Luckily, there is a bar from Lumi that satisfies an undecided palate: The Salted Pretzel (£6.75/100g). It has very generous chunks of salted pretzel (it’s all there in the name) trapped amid swirls of caramelised white chocolate and dark. Depending on what bit you get it could be salty and very sweet or salty and not so sweet.

Peta, who makes the bars, likens it to a digestive biscuit in taste and, although I don’t initially agree, I see what she means after I’ve tested vigorously. This bar has become a bestseller, but it was a bit too sweet for me, overall. However, it’s worth a try if you want something a little different and fun.

Continuing this theme I’ve inadvertently put myself on, for bars with layered profiles, I try Bristol-based Ruby Hue’s 72% Rwenzori (Ugandan) Orange and Szechuan bar (£6.50/70g). This is a beautiful bar, delicate and delicious and the flavours unfold like a good story. The orange peel is there, but not overpowering, like a peak through a window and the pepper is very much back row, so no need for trepidation. I think it’s a lovely taste for summer.

Then Fossa’s 54% dark milk chocolate with Yuzu Sea Salt, (£8.95/50g). This has cocoa from Tanzania and wonderful, chewy, yuzu (an Asia citrus fruit) peel. This was unexpectedly delicious and one tasting square turned to three before I squirrelled the whole bar away for later. It needs savouring, not least because of the cost. But it is very very, very good.

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