I’m always excited when I find Tea Room Chocolates in stores. I love the flavors that they do, which is mixing all sorts of teas with different types of chocolate. So far my favorite of theirs is the White Chocolate Chamomile. This is why I was very happy to come across a few new bars of Tea Room’s in Cost Plus World Market. I immediately snatched it up, along with another new flavor, and eagerly took them home.

Today’s bar is 38% organic cacao “infused with a tropical fruit tea blend of pineapple, banana, mango and other island fruits”. Sounds yummy! The package is colorful and vibrant, which I think reflects the tropical fruits used in this bar. The chocolate is a nice medium brown color with a subtle sheen. The aroma is that of creamy milk chocolate with some hints of caramel. Sometimes I feel like I get a whiff of fruit, but it’s fleeting and quickly overpowered by the chocolate.

The flavor is immediately sweet and I get a slight hint of pineapple. then the rich chocolate flavor kicks in with notes of cream and caramel. At the end of the flavor I get some notes of coconut and “fruits”, hard to lay my finger on exactly what is it. Delicious, I’m really impressed. I admit I was a little worried that it’d taste like sun tan lotion but it totally doesn’t. It’s a subtle flavor that adds to the chocolate’s profile.

Out of all the Tea Room bars I’ve tasted to date, this one ranks pretty high up there. The flavors are all really well balanced and it makes for a very interesting and fun flavor. It comes across as exotic, and I think it’s a nice new twist on the more mundane flavors you see mixed with milk chocolate nowadays. I recommend it if you happen to come across it!

Rating: Will Buy Again

Links The Tea Room Website

It’s gotten to a point where I am not sure how to write the set-up for HiChew anymore. I have reviewed them so frequently on the site here that I feel that you, my readers, are quite familiar with them now. So I am hesitant to go ahead and write essentially what I feel to be re hash. The HiChew today is a limited edition flavor called “Furano Melon”.

The first question that ran though my mind was “what exactly is a furano melon”? A little Google searching answered my question quite nicely. Furano is a place in Hokkaido, and it’s famous for its variety of what we know as cantaloupe. Regional fruit and vegetables are a very popular affair in Japan, so showcasing specific regional varieties in candies is a popular thing to do. HiChew is showering Hokkaido with some candy love by making a Furano Melon flavor.

The chew is a pretty light orange and smells sweet and juicy. The flavor is extremely fruity and floral at first, with nice rounded notes of cantaloupe. I’m reminded of the cantaloupe jelly belly bean. Then the flavor becomes more solid and intense, with notes of apple, peach and lychee. It’s very juicy and really flavorful, and it’s very authentic to what a real cantaloupe takes like. So yummy!

Like all the other HiChew flavors, this one is stellar and really is tasty. It doesn’t disappoint! I highly recommend this flavor if you’re into melons, especially cantaloupe!

Rating: Will Buy Again

Links HiChew Website (English)

I was super excited about finding this bar, since it’s been ages since I’ve had a Dolfin bar of any kind. That’s one thing that stinks about making a big move, you lose all the local places that you know where you can find your favorite stuff. Dolfin is certainly a favorite of mine. Interestingly enough, this is a bar of theirs I haven’t seen before. Regardless, I was excited to have anything by Dolfin, so having it be a new item wasn’t a big deal. I trust them to do a good job with all their flavors, which has been my experience in the past.

So what it SpeculOOs? That’s exactly what I wanted to know when I first saw the bar. It was my sister who informed me that it was a Dutch spice cookie, so then I had an idea of what the flavor profile was. Once I got to a computer I found out it is the Speculaas cookie, and I have to admit, they look pretty good. Next time I’ll find some without the chocolate bar around it.

It’s a small 30g bar, just the right size. The chocolate looks “normal” with a nice medium brown color. It smells sweet and slightly spicy with notes of smooth cinnamon.

The texture is a nice contrast. It’s both silky from the chocolate and slightly grainy from the added ingredients of crushed cookies and spices. The flavor is lovely as the milk chocolate is extremely buttery and rich with nice notes of chocolate and caramel. The cookies bits have a slight shortbread flavor to it, and the spices are just enough to be there but don’t overpower anything. They’re a kiss of cinnamon and pepper. It’s a great combinations and really delicious.

So this bar, it’s amazing. I want more!  Maybe it’s the lack of Dolfin in my life recently that’s talking, but it was a nicely made and flavor chocolate bar. Just another reason why Dolfin is such a great chocolatier in my mind.

Rating: Will Buy Again

Links Dolfin Website

I was visiting the Mitsuwa market in Culver City the other week, which is where I bought these fun Japanese gummis. The colorful package immediately called out to me on the shelf, but then once I saw what the flavor was, I was completely sold. Guava? Yes please! This is a fruit I fell in love with a long time ago on a family trip to Maui back when I was a wee little kid. Since then I’ve always been on the lookout for guava flavored…well, anything really. So you can imagine my happiness when guava and candy were married into this adorable little package.

They look similar to the Haribo grapefruit gummies. They’re irregular flat discs with a solid coating of sanding sugar on them. They smell extremely sweet and juicy, with notes of pineapple and passion fruit. It’s a very authentic guava aroma.

The candy is immediately fresh and juicy as soon as you pop it into your mouth. The flavor is authentic guava; juicy, sweet, tropical, with notes of peach, passion fruit and pineapple. They’re incredibly good. They have a bit of tartness to them towards the end, but the “first” part of the flavor is so good I don’t mind it at all. So yummy! The texture is nice as it’s just the right amount of chewy for a gummi, it’s neither to hard nor too soft. The texture suggests that these are relatively fresh (which sometimes with imported candy, they aren’t) so it was such a treat to find these to be supple still.

I really appreciated the novelty of this candy, since guava is such a rare flavor to find in the USA. I think it really works well in candy format, so I hope to find it around again sometime soon. I also think that this is a good way to enjoy guava if you’ve never had it before, since in many places you cannot find the fruit to try. Point being: guava is yummy, so are these gummis; so try it sometime.

Rating: Will Buy Again

These were and unexpected, yet thrilling find for me. I was shopping in the Grove Farmer’s Market on Fairfax and 3rd here in Los Angeles. I saw this package tucked into one of the lower candy shelves, and picked it up because of the large image of the cheetah on it. I don’t speak a lick of French, but I could decipher a bit from the import tag on the back. It only really translated “Le bonbon tendre au gout sauvage” description on the front, which roughly translated to “The tender candy with the wild taste”. That was enough to sell me on it, and I brought it home with me.

I had to open the package once I got all my necessary photos out of the way. I tasted one and immediately understood the description. These are licorice caramels.

The bad holds a bunch of individually wrapped caramels. They come in colorful wax wrappers that mimic the bag they come in. The caramels have a beautiful color to them, like a dark “dulce del leche”. It smells slightly sweet and is firm to the touch.

The flavor is excellent. You first tastes notes of licorice, with sweet, earthy flavors. Then the sweet creaminess of the caramel bit comes through, adding the tastes of butter and cream. Together they makes a very creamy, rich flavor that is both mild and flavorful. I have to admit, licorice and caramel makes a pretty awesome combination.

Caramel isn’t something I crave very often, so I’m not sure this is a candy I’d come back to often, as delicious as they are. However if I do see other varieties of Krema out there, I’ll be sure to give them a shot.

Cybele from also did an excellent review over at Candyblog.net.

Rating: Will Buy Again