Charlie’s Chocolate Factory – Sea Salt & Toffee Bits

I was in the Co-op the other day buying chicken feed, when I saw a lot of chocolates in different shapes: horseshoes, dogs, horses, etc. They definitely fit the theme of the store. That was what originally caught my attention, but then I noticed these two bars that looked fairly interesting. I picked up a bar and saw that they’re from a local chocolate company based out of Burnaby, so I thought I’d give them a try. According to their website they’ve been around since 1970, but I don’t remember having had their chocolate before. It looks like they do a lot of novelty items, which might be fun for a party or corporate event.

Sea Salt

I don’t mean to be picky, but I am, and I found it annoying that the labels were on the back of the packages. I would like to see the flavours without picking them up. I don’t know if my problem is due to laziness or efficiency, but I’ll go with efficiency.

It’s quite warm right now, and my Nest insists it’s sitting at 28 degrees celcius in my house, so it’s probably for that reason the chocolate is a little soft. When breaking off a piece, it just kind of folded over and softly fell away. I did a chocolate tasting once (definitely wouldn’t recommend), and apparently the snap of the chocolate is an important piece of discerning good chocolate. I don’t blame this chocolate for lacking in that aspect because of the heat, but I’ll put the other bar in the fridge.

So this Sea Salt bar is made of dark chocolate, and upon putting it in my mouth I am immediately hit by the pleasant taste of salt. It’s almost overwhelming, but I have a bit of a salty tooth so I like it. After this initial greeting, the salt gives way to pure dark chocolate. It’s not bad. I wasn’t expecting much to be honest, but it’s actually not bad. My only thing is I would prefer it to have the sea salt throughout the chocolate, but I’m not sure how feasible that even is.

Toffee Bits

Toffee Bits has not spent much time in the fridge as I am impatient, so once again there is no hard crack of the chocolate. It was certainly firmer than the Sea Salt, but still came away smoothly and softly without a sound.

As for taste, I’m not a fan. It’s not the worst milk chocolate I’ve ever had, but it’s not great. Looking at the ingredients, I can only assume that the reason I prefer the dark over the milk chocolate is because the dark chocolate’s ingredients are more limited. Granted, this is partly due to Toffee Bits having additions on top, but in any case, I don’t like it enough to have any more of it.

Overall Impression

For $5.75 per 100 grams of “fancier” chocolate, it’s not too bad of a deal. It’s not as delicious as say, Thomas Haas, but also not as expensive. I won’t be rushing out to buy any more of this anytime soon. I do enough baking as it is, so don’t really need extra sweets in my house. As far as specialty bars of chocolate go, I prefer the localish (by geography, not country) Seattle Chocolate. I bought a couple of their bars around Christmas time at a local sweets shop and didn’t eat them until recently. I regret not having bought more. They were so freaking good, and their packaging is beautiful.