Belly Button Lindt

In my halcyon youth, one of the high points was biking the 2.5 miles to Wayno's, spending some hard-earned 45 cents on a Hershey's Symphony, biking back to the bridge, and eating my chocolate bar whilst playing with the eddies. I loved the Almond Toffee variety, especially. There was something satisfying about the chunks of crunch in the middle of the chocolate. A little surprise for your tongue.

Things have changed since then. I'm now 3000 miles from Wayno's. Symphony bars now cost 75 cents. I prefer dark chocolate to milk now, and European brands to Hershey's. I do still, however, relish things in my chocolate. That's not to say I don't enjoy a nice piece of 70% dark. I love it. But more often I crave chocolate with hidden surprises.

Since moving to the heart of chocolate (while chocolate originated in the Americas, was brought to Europe by the Spaniards, and processed by the Dutch, modern chocolate was born in Switzerland), I have made it my goal to try out as many chocolates as I can. It's a hard life, I know. Even before coming here, I've been a big fan of Lindt. They make quality chocolate that melts silkily on your tongue. To be sure, not all they're chocolate is good -- they have some strange concepts and combinations, which I'll get to -- but the good stuff is amazing.

Crème brulée is a great dessert. It's easy to see the simple delight Amèlie gets from cracking the top of them to reveal the soft golden treasure beneath the crisp, glassy caramel layer. The good people at Lindt have done an amazing thing: they put crème brulée inside a chocolate bar. I don't know if it's real crème brulée or not, but if it isn't, it's an amazing bit of mimicry. There are even flecks of crispy caramel. The problem is that it's not that that crème brulée is bad: it's that it's there at all. It just doesn't go with chocolate. I'm not sure what kind of crazy sausages the Lindt R&D people were snorting, but this combination is out there.

A combination that Lindt hit out of the park is a classic one: hazelnuts and chocolate. Lindt makes two kinds of praliné rocher: milk and dark. It will come as no surprise to people that I prefer the dark. There's a deeper flavor to it. The milk chocolate one is nice. Light and sweet, as you'd expect. But the dark has sombre tones. Low frequency reverberations that give it heft and structure. These dark underpinnings make the praliné and its sweet hazelnut cream stand out and be noticed.

If you like dark, and you like hazelnut, you may find a new best friend in the Praliné Rocher Chocolat Noir of Lindt.