Darker than Black, Week 49: Raaka Virgin Chocolate Hojicha & Bitter Orange

[dorchadas]

Tea time!

This came in the same shipment as the Genmaicha Crunch, but after the bland disappointment of that chocolate it took a while god is to get to this one. Hōjicha (ほうじ茶) means "roasted tea," and it adds a distinct smoky flavor to the normal slightly-bitter taste of green tea. It's the kind of thing that should compliment dark chocolate very well if they can pull it off.

Spoiler: they can't.

Today is also the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, so it's another reason to have a Japanese tea-based chocolate. If I really wanted to eat chocolate as a memorial for Hiroshima, it'd be tsukemen chocolate or yakigaki chocolate, both of which actually sound pretty terrible and which I'd write a scathing takedown of. Like that guy I saw on late-night Japanese television trying curry-flavored ramune who, after he drank it, glared indignantly and sputtered クソ味だ！ ("This tastes like shit!")

Now that I've lowered your expectations, dear reader, let us continue.

The Hero is here to claim the treasure.

Alright, so much like with Genmaicha Crunch, this didn't taste like hōjicha at all. There was none of the smoky flavor I was hoping for and really, it didn't even taste like tea. But unlike the Genmaicha Crunch, there was a second flavor in this chocolate for it to fall back on and that saved it for me. The bitter orange came out nicely, not so strongly that it overwhelmed the chocolate, but just a nice undertone of citrus that went well with the cacao. They should have just marketed this as bitter orange chocolate and I would have thought it was wildly successful.

Maybe the tea is a kind of flavor enhancer, and it's the reason why the bitter orange stands out? I have no idea, really. I'm just trying to find a way that tea-based chocolate won't so often be disappointing when I love tea so much.

Do do dodoooo!

schoolpsychnerd's Opinion

I think my expectations for tea chocolate are relatively low at this point. The tea in this didn't come through much at all, possibly because the orange was so strong. It was delicious, like nice and mellow orange with well done dark chocolate, but I didn't get any of the tea with it. Overall it was good but not quite all it was advertised to be.

I agree entirely. Their reach exceeded their grasp, but it wasn't bad. Just not what I was hoping for.


Sent from my iPad

Comments

[tilmon]

I think a tea-based choco would pretty much have to be either white chocolate (a.k.a. not real chocolate) or a pretty milky chocolate. How can something as mellow as tea otherwise stand out in something as naturally bitter as chocolate?

[dorchadas]

I think you're right. The best of them I've tried so far was the Adagio Teas Lapsang Souchong Tea Bar, and but lapsang souchong has a strong smokey flavor that goes well with dark chocolate. Everything else either had too little tea flavor, or the chocolate was too sweet for me.