We have exciting dinner plans tonight.  Our friends who own a restaurant are testing a new concept and we are to be their guinea pigs.  These are last minute plans, so we had to quickly switch the planned dinner to lunch.  That turned out not to be a bad thing.  Dinner was to be a nice prime rib.  Instead, I cut it into prime ribeye steaks and hit the grill.  The weather is perfect.  Mid 70’s, no humidity. I love LA.  Grilled steak, veggies, and a Sea Smoke Pinot.  But it is dessert that made the meal extra special.  The other day I was in Bristol Farms and spontaneously picked up a few special dark chocolate bars. The brand is one I never had before..Vosges.  I tried two flavors; ‘black pearl bar’:  ginger, wasabi, black sesame seeds.  The other was the ‘Red Fire Bar’: Mexican ancho y chipotle chiles, Ceylon Cinnamon.  Both are 55% Cacao. 

From here, I would have to compare things to a wine tasting.  The bars actually have five instructional steps listed on the back: “breathe, see, smell, snap, and bite.”  Each involves using your different senses to experience different aspects of the experience.  One that was unfamiliar but effective involves using your tongue to press the bits of chocolate to the roof of your mouth.  Combined with inhaling at the right moment, this had the effect of bringing out the respective spiciness of each bar. 

All in all, we both loved the mexican bar best.  I think the combination of great dark chocolate with cinnamon and chili is exhilarating. 

One side note:  There was a third bar: a green and black’s. It was lousy. Being that this is normally a great brand, we were confused as to why.  Then Scot noticed the expiration of 8/07 on the bar.  This is now the third brand and time this happened to us at Bristol Farms.  They never seem to remove their expired chocolate from the shelf.  This time, we are actually going to go back and point it out to them.  THen use the store credit to buy more bars, because this was fun!