Jade Chocolate

Jade Chocolates

If you're looking for something different, these bars are for you.

Mindy Fong, the founder of Jade Chocolates, takes great care in producing intriguing products at Jade Chocolate. Born in San Francisco, she made a big change in her life several years after graduating from UC Davis when she switched from a career in architectural design to creating a chocolate company. She drew inspiration from her family, her mixed heritage and her surroundings, but it was her love of and interest in chocolate that landed her in the position of starting a business in the chocolate world. With parents from both China and the Philippines, Mindy wanted to incorporate various teas, spices and other ingredients popular in these two areas into her chocolate line. Using interesting combinations in her chocolates has paid off well, because from 2008 to 2012, Jade Chocolates won many new product and outstanding product awards, especially for the milk chocolate bars.

Jade chocolate bars are packaged beautifully. The elegant label isn't flashy, but it's eye catching despite its simplicity. It has an organic, clean look. The outer paper, in this case brown, reminds me of the beautiful hand-made paper my sister-in-law used to make.

The look of the bar is unique in that the squares are alternately raised up or low. Pretty etchings are displayed on each square. It's as if the bar were designed, cut apart, rearranged and put back together. I'm not sure that's actually how the pattern occurred, though. However it was done, it's quite artistic looking.

Jade dark chocolate Kuro Genmai bar. 

I ended up trying the Kuro Genmai bar, because the only other option on the shelf was one that contained espresso beans. As some of you already know, I can't tolerate a lot of caffeine because of a heart valve leak, so I decided to play it safe and only get the one bar.

There's no doubt that this bar is exotic. Though the website boasts that there's an intense chocolate flavor associated with Kuro Gemani bar, the toasted rice overpowers it. There is, however, a beautiful and potent chocolate aroma that accompanies the bar. Unfortunately, the extra toasted rice flavor that's almost on the verge of being burnt is too strong for this particular chocolate, which tastes more like baker's chocolate than an artesional bar. When I did get any chocolate notes popping up through the taste of toasted rice cakes, they reminded me of quality bittersweet baking chocolate. I was searching for subtle spices and complexity in the chocolate, but my taste buds came up short.

The bar is nice but not extraordinary, and at close to $6.00 for a 2oz bar, I was expecting something outstanding. That said, there is something intriguing about the bar. I just wanted to like it more than I actually did. If you're into interesting flavors, you might love it. If you're strictly into phenomenal chocolate, you might want to try something else.

You also might want to try a different bar if you are adamant about avoiding soy and insist that your products are organic, because these are not. Nor are they kosher. All this information can be found on the Jade Chocolate website. It is honestly and openly presented in the FAQ section. The list of ingredients in the bar I purchased are straightforward and pure, though: 62% cacao (cacao beans, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, natural vanilla) and roasted brown rice. That's it.

Finding diversity in chocolate bars is not necessarily difficult, but finding something original that also appeals to many people can be. Despite my little complaints, it was a pleasant adventure sampling a bar that maybe isn't my favorite but left me curious and wanting to try more from this company.

Cocoa Parlor Simple Pleasure

When it comes to reviews, I don't like giving bad ones. Unfortunately, because honesty is a concern of mine, rotten tomato critiques are a must sometimes. Such is the case with one of the Simple Pleasure bars by Cocoa Parlor I tried recently.

It's always a disappointment when you select a bar, pay more than $4.00 and end up not liking it. It's worse when it goes beyond merely not liking to the "this is icky" stage, complete with yuck noises and a wrinkling of the nose upon first taste. Fortunately, I bought two flavors from this company, so at least one was edible.

Milk chocolate with nibs

Without carefully reading the mostly bland looking label that has only a splash of color in the cutesy drawing of a girl on it, I picked the Crushed Velvet bar, thinking it was a dark chocolate with crushed cacao nibs. It turns out it's milk chocolate, but since I'm one of the few who likes both milk and dark chocolate I wasn't disappointed when I took a closer look. I thought the combination of milk chocolate with nibs might even be better than the typical dark with nibs bars found on so many shelves these days, a good contrast of flavors. The letdown came later when I put a square of the chocolate in my mouth.

WHAT IS THIS?!?!

The company claims:

This milk chocolate has a higher cacao content then most milk chocolates 

giving it a very rich chocolate flavor.

Well, that's not exactly true about the flavor. In fact, there's not much resembling chocolate in this bar except the color. Even the first bite had me questioning what I was putting in my mouth. There wasn't even a hint of true cocoa flavor.

More than chocolate, it tastes like poo. Well, it tastes how I imagine poo tastes. I don't actually know that particular flavor, but I know that it's rare that I want to spit out a mouthful of chocolate. Sadly, I went back to it several times thinking maybe I was too harsh in my initial analysis. Could it be that bad? Yes, it could. Each time I took a nibble, my taste buds were offended. On one occasion, I did detect a single note of chocolate somewhere in the mess of other confusing flavors, but otherwise the flavor was overwhelmingly foreign.

I can only guess, but it seems that whatever nibs were used were probably burnt. Also, the milk in the chocolate may have been sour. Whatever's going on in this chocolate, the end result is a bitter, acrid, sour and slightly sweet combination of flavors. The aftertaste is terrible and lingers painfully long. It tastes unnatural. I needed a real chocolate chaser and was glad I had some of the L'Amourette chocolate left with which to cleanse my palate. Sadly, I think I'm going to have to toss what I have left of this one.

With the toasted hazelnut and salt in dark chocolate bar, the big plus is that the hazelnuts are fresh. Yahoo! That's a very good thing. I have to drop into lecture mode, though, because following trends doesn't always pay off, and in this case, adding a generous dose of salt to the mix is unnecessary. Hazelnuts have a strong flavor, and the classic combination with chocolate doesn't need additional competing flavors. If you're going to add an ingredient, make sure that it serves a legitimate purpose. Here, all the salt does is become a distraction.

Hazelnuts and salt in dark chocolate

Even in this bar there's an occasional sour note. It makes me think something sinister is going on in the cacao bean roasting process. Either that or the beans are not being picked at the optimal time or stored properly. Whatever the case may be, the chocolate, despite the quality of its combined ingredients and the nice hazelnut flavor that occasionally shines through, comes of as average at best. The chocolate is only memorable in that it has a strange flavor, one that adding or subtracting sugar or other ingredients to probably can't fix.

Now for the good.

The good thing about chocolate is that it's a little bit like art. Maybe coffee is a better metaphor in this case. What one person loves, another might strongly dislike, and a third person might find mediocre. Just because I wasn't impressed with the flavors doesn't mean someone else won't find these bars great. I should add too that there are some very nice qualities about these bars that include the following:

1. They are soy free, gluten free, fair trade and organic.
2. The dark chocolate bars are vegan.
3. The products are GMO free.

I noticed that the company makes hand-made truffles too. Their website can be found here.