May 19th, 2008Accepting chocolate with crubled bacon bits was a stretch for me. Love chocolate and god knows, love bacon, but the unusual combination from a very fine American chocolate company made me suspicious. When I tried it, I gained insight. Its not that chocolate doesnt go with bacon conceptually because what is bacon after all but a lot of animal fat & salt & a little piggy essence. What made this bar so very, very bad was that the bacon tasted like Baco-os (those stale, imitation brown rocks you get at a really bad salad bar). It was not the crunchy, salty, savory cured bacon I might fry up for the hungry teenagers in my house on Sunday mornings. Chocolate with Baco-like-bacon is all the way bad. But theres one worse. Mushroom gravy in the dark chocolate bon bon I tried last week in Silver Lake. Wow. I looked helplessly for a garbage can to use as a spitoon - nothing in sight. I had to zoom out to the street, doing the wavy-chicken-arm thing people do when theyre gonna hurl or spit some nasty chocolate in the gutter. The mushroom gravy was SWEET. That poor, misguided chocolatier had added some white chocolate as if to improve things. I am a patience person. I allow for many flavor adventures as long as they are earnest. I forgave the lack of originiality in the work (the chocolates were made with molds painted with cocoa butter and contrasting transfer sheets - OK, but nothing too impressive). Ill forgive the $2.00 price tag for one piece of said chocolate. But I will not forgive the miscarriage of mushroom into innocent and otherwise inoffensive dark chocolate. No, no, no, I have to say no to the Bacos and gravy. Even if the goal of the artisan chocolatier who pushes the boundaries of flavors is to surprise and entertain us - I say to them: Common Sense, Por Favor!! Mushroom sauce, mushroom gravy, and mushroom caps stuffed with garlic have no place in the chocolatiers arsenal. Make some honey caramel and call it a day, fool. Onward.