Vosges Mo’s Bacon Chocolate Bar
Bacon and Chocolate. To explore the latest Vosges entry, Mo’s Bacon Bar, my mind drifts, my soul swells, nostalgia and the unrequited passions of my youth swim in the deep glittery motes of my doe-like eyes. “Love, sweet love.” These most beautiful words, the plaintiff yet serene voice, the cap and robe, taken together, emblematize the luscious serenity of our most sacred of emotions. The also expose the lurking absurdity of it all, especially when you are incapably of ever uttering them, or any close derivative, without flashing back to the brilliant priest played by Peter Cook in The Princess Bride, who intones: “And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva.”
With these words ripe on the tongue, bite into the Vosges Bacon Chocolate Bar, officially known as Mo’s Bacon Bar. The bacon bar is a dark milk chocolate, combined with applewood smoked bacon, alder smoked salt, and 41% deep milk chocolate.
Vosges Haut-Chocolat is rightly famed for the witty and trendy blends concocted by Vosges founder Katrina Markoff, who possesses that rare blend of skills that ranges from concocting to packaging to marketing chocolate. As the list of chocolate candy bars grows (and I will always take off my hat to Katrina for making flavored chocolate bars and calling them “candy bars.” Humility? Playfulness?), the genesis and of ever-more daring and bold entries seems inevitable. My personal feelings toward the incessant perfection of the Vosges candy bar has gone from weariness to resignation to acceptance to embrace to enthusiasm. Vosges candy bars exhibit the clarity of purpose and democratic elegance of a backyard chicken coop.
So what does it taste like?
Bacon and chocolate. The alderwood smoked salt adds a little sparkly campfireyness to the applewood smoked bacon and the deep (41%) milk chocolate. The flavor goes together in a way that is jarring for almost no-one, and pleasantly homey for most.
The fact that you can really taste the bacon is a key success of the chocolate. In my assessment, this is carried off largely on the back of the milk in the milk chocolate. Milk acts as a buffer and a binder–dairy is the great equalizer, and is the natural intermediary if you think of America’s most successful hybrid dishes such as faux
carbonara (pancetta from pasta carbonara and cream from pasta alfredo). Milk in chocolate has historically been used, among other reasons, to cut the harsh taste of cheap cacao. Vosges uses good quality chocolate, but seems to be using milk in many of the candy bars in order to help the flavors behave themselves and get along together. The most spectacular bacon chocolates I know, such as the unsurpassed Bacon + Chocolate bar by Xocolatl de David, of are made using a ganache, which consists primarily of heavy cream and dark chocolate–so I’m not sure there is any other way to carry this off.
That said, if I were a chocolatier I would invent a less meddlesome intermediary, such a… bread. (The tastiest thing I ever ate in my entire life, other than a grouse I once hand-caught and fire-roasted whilst starving as a teen-ager on a canoe trip in Canada, was a crusty baguette sandwich made of dark chocolate and crispy-chewy fried bits of fatty bacon (lardons) at a friends house in France.)
So, check it out, and do not be surprised if you like it. It makes a great addition to the stable of current bars by Vosges.
- The best-selling Barcelona Exotic Candy Bar of hickory smoked almonds + fleur de sel gray sea salt + deep milk chocolate
- The oooh and ahhh-provoking Asian-sexy Black Pearl Exotic Candy Bar of ginger + wasabi + black sesame seeds + dark chocolate
- The frisky-hip Calindia Exotic Candy Bar of Indian green cardamom + organic California walnuts + dried plums + Venezuelan dark chocolate
- The groovy bluesy bayoosy Creole Exotic Candy Bar of cocoa nibs + New Orleans style coffee + Sao Thome bittersweet chocolate
- The jumpy happy lazy Woolloomooloo Exotic Candy Bar of roasted & salted macadamia nuts + Indonesian coconut
- The classically elegant Italophile’s Gianduja Exotic Candy Bar of almonds + hazelnuts + deep milk chocolate
- The loftily flexy yogi-righteous Goji Exotic Candy Bar of Tibetan goji berries + pink Himalayan salt + deep milk chocolate
- The ceremonial soothing and smoothing Macha Exotic Candy Bar of macha green tea + deep milk chocolate
- The ambiguous smiling alluringly-yet-motherly Naga Exotic Candy Bar of sweet Indian curry powder + coconut flakes + deep milk chocolate
- The coyote hunting Oaxaca Exotic Candy Bar of Oaxacan guajillo y pasilla chillies + Tanzanian bittersweet chocolate
- The weird hip wiggling yet happy-go-lucky d’Oliva Exotic Candy Bar of Kalamata olives + Venezuelan white chocolate
- The smoking-cloves-on-the-rooftop-of-a-
Meat. Fruit. Veg. What are we missing? A James Joyce would propound obliquely: “Bread, or liquid bread.” I predict some derivation of Mariebelle’s beautiful Croquette au Chocolate: which consists of buttery European, cookies for a crunchy texture, combined with MarieBelle’s dark and milk chocolate Colombian couverture.
However, if any chocolatiers are reading, I have an even better suggestion to ride the wave of porcophilia taking the country by storm. Adopt the chocolate-makers practice of noting what percentage of the bar is actual bacon. For example, neophytes and small children could eat the 25% Bacon Chocolate bar. The fearful yet curious could eat the 50% Bacon Chocolate Bar. Intrepid louts like myself might opt for the 85% bacon chocolate bar (which might be something like 85% bacon, 7.5 percent sugar, and 7.5 percent chocolate. Then, the unromantic maniacs who miss the point altogether could just get the 99% bacon chocolate bar, which contains almost no chocolate at all, but is really just a big slab of bacon dusted with cocoa powder. Available only at the butcher.
Mark Bitterman :: Feb.02.2008 :: Flavored Chocolate Bars, Milk Chocolate ::
