I am partial to milk chocolate with high cocoa content. It combines the best of both worlds: the rich flavor of dark chocolate, and the smoothness of milk chocolate. The better grades will be made of cocoa coming from a single region, ideally Venezuelan criollo. The natural candidate would be El Rey, a Venezuelan maker, but I don’t like the milky aftertaste of their Caoba 41% cocoa bar. My favorite, Michel Cluizel, makes superlative bars with 50% cocoa content, but the cocoa is from Java or Madagascar. They even used to have a 60% bar blended with almond cream, unfortunately it seems to have been discontinued.

A new specialty chocolate store, Bittersweet Cafe, opened recently on Fillmore Street in san Francisco. They have a good selection, almost as good as Fog City News, with some brands I haven’t seen before. One of those was this bar made from Venezuelan Chuao criollo beans, with a mix of chopped almonds, hazelnuts, and interestingly, pistachios. It is made by Chuao Chocolatier, a small artisanal company based in San Diego (but we won’t hold their unfortunate choice of location against them).

The bar has a rich, deep flavor, and is not over-sweetened as is unfortunately too often the case with milk chocolates. The cocoa content is not indicated, but I would estimate it at around 40%. The nuts are crunchy and fresh, with no hint of rancidity. This is no small feat, hazelnuts and pistachios spoil easily and are tricky to work with. Fran’s, based in Seattle, won’t even ship some of their Oregon hazelnut confections outside Washington State out of fear they will lose their freshness by the time they arrive. At $6.50 ($6 if you buy direct in packs of 4), this is by no means cheap, but at least they give you an unusual 110 gram portion, none of that wimpy 75 gram size companies like Scharffen-Berger (now a part of the despicable Hershey group) are turning to in order to increase profits.

Merry Christmas to all, hopefully one rich in cacao…

Update (2012-12-13):

They changed the packaging and name. It is now called the “Milk chocolate nut nirvana”.

Update (2013-04-20):

Sadly Bittersweet Cafe’s Fillmore location is no more.