ZOMG, Candy!

Hershey’s Zero bar’s claim to fame is its white coating. Specifically, it’s “caramel, peanut and almond nougat covered with white fudge.”

Mine came free, courtesy of Munchies Sweets and Treats.  It was a bit too abundantly full of caramel, I guess, as my bar’s trademark white coating was streaked with it.

The bottom layer of nougat was faintly sweet chocolate with strong almond extract notes. Every once in a while, I hit an actual peanut, which introduced a bit more nuttiness, but the almond extract was the predominant player.

The nougat was covered with a stripe of sweet and serviceable caramel. The white fudge coating was milky and overly sweet.

Overall, I found this bar to be too sweet, and its flavors weren’t distinctive enough. I needed to eat it slowly and carefully to pick out the different flavors, as they got all mushed together and masked by the sweet. An O.

One of my dad’s specialty, usually-only-cranks-it-out-for-dinner-parties dishes is taro root with chicken. He poaches chicken, uses the resulting stock to cook sliced taro root for hours, until it’s buttery and meltingly soft, and mixes in the poached chicken (pulled into thin slivers that disappear into the “melted” taro) and chopped scallions. It’s delicious.

So, taro + chicken =  delicious. Taro + chocolate? We’ll see. I bought this box of Choco Roll Taro solely because it was so weird! If you’ve never had it, taro is a root vegetable that’s sort of like an extra starchy, slightly sweet and nutty, purple potato.

Ever thought, “Gee, I like mashed potatoes, but I bet they’d be better with chocolate instead of gravy”? Well, some Asian person thought the equivalent for the taro. From the looks of the purple frosting and cherry covered thing on the box, the Choco Roll Taro might be based off of some pre-existing dessert concoction.

Each individually wrapped Choco Roll Taro is a pink and purple speckled taro root center inside a round wafer roll, all covered in a yellow-y white chocolate. Don’t worry - the purple center isn’t nearly as bright as it looks on the box. In fact, the mottled pink/red flecked center is rather pretty.

The taro center tastes like pasty, extra-starchy mashed potato with a hint of nuttiness and lots of added sweetness. The extra sweet comes through in the finish and ends on a rather fruity note.

The wafer layer is unremarkable: airy, bland, and crisp. It serves its textural and structural purpose well, at least. Finally, the white chocolate outside is kind of greasy and pretty bland. I’m not a white chocolate fan, so I have little experience in picking out flavor notes in white chocolate. It just tasted like regular old sweet white chocolate to me.

All in all, I think I’ll continue to take my taro with chicken rather than chocolate. The flavor combination is just too strange for me to appreciate, and that strangeness overrides any ooh factor that the interplay of paste and crunch and melt could have brought.

I ate half of a roll to taste; the rest of the box disappeared when I moved. I may have given it away back in New Haven, or it could be buried in my candy stash somewhere. Either way, a taste is plenty Choco Roll Taro for me. It gets a no lettered – for being harmlessly not tasty.

The saga of my sweet-toothing my way through Chicago continues with Fannie May chocolates, who I would liken to Chicago’s version of See’s, except See’s is better.

At a Fannie May store, I picked out a selection of their chocolates and a few of their individually wrapped candies (review on those to come next week). Top down in columns, from left to right they are, as best as I can tell/remember: bittermint, some nougat thing, vanilla buttercream dark, no clue, buttercrisp, peanut butter, raspberry cream?, lemon buttercream, and a Trinidad. The salesguy assured me that there would be a comprehensive key online. There isn’t.

bittermint - this was a mint in the York Peppermint Pattie vein. The dark chocolate shell was quite thick, and the gooey mint innards had a strong mintiness tempered by a slight bitterness. The lightly bitter finish went nicely with the dark chocolate.

rectangular nougat thing - I have no idea what this is and couldn’t match it up to anything on their website. It was dark chocolate coating a chewy, nutty nougat log that tasted of maple, I thin.

vanilla buttercream dark - I’m not a big fan of buttercreams but let myself be talked into buying this one by Katie, who loves them. This was sweet and cloying but otherwise had a great vanilla flavor. If you have a higher sugar tolerance than I do, you’d probably like it.

buttercrisp - an almond buttercrisp in milk chocolate. I found it too be too hard to bite into and with a weird, not quite toffee-like texture (it didn’t cleave like toffee does).

peanut butter - a creamy peanut butter filling where the peanut butter was not nearly nutty or salty enough. The milk chocolate shell was slightly too thick for balance.

raspberry cream - I think that’s what this was. The chocolate shell was thicker than I expected, and the filling tasted strongly artificial with a slight cherry cordial winey-ness to it.

lemon buttercream - the center of this tasted like a lemon meringue pie. The lemon-ness was super bright.

Trinidad - I’ve managed to save the best for last: it’s a chocolate cream center with “pastel coating” and toasted coconut. The chocolate filling was smooth and creamy, and the coconut flavor was just right.  The only one I really enjoyed from the ones I picked.

I had wanted to buy some Mint Meltaways in my boxed assortment but the salesguy told me not to because their mintiness would overpower everything else. I managed to buy a little tray of 3 larger meltaways at a Walgreen’s instead. I tasted them after the Frangos that I so loved, and they paled in comparison.

The Mint Meltaways had a pastel green white chocolate coating that tasted too sweet and sugary. It gave the confection an unpleasantly greasy creaminess and a thick finish. The mint flavor was weaker than that of Frangos, and it was more artificial tasting.

Overall, I didn’t really enjoy Fannie May that much. I liked the bittermint and Trinidad, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to seek those out. An O for the chocolates described here. The individually wrapped chocolates I bought fared much better, and my review of those will publish on Monday.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a review of Lily O’Briens crispy heart and sticky toffee. It was about as scathing as I get:

“From the two I tasted, a crispy heart and a sticky toffee, either Ireland has poor chocolatiers or Lily O’Briens is quite overrated.”

The next day, I got the following email from one of their representatives:

“I work for Lily O’Brien’s Chocolates and have read your comments on our two signature recipes with great interest. Our chocolates, when fresh, taste truly fantasti and the two recipes critiqued are among our chocolate fans’ favourites (check out the testimonials on our website from across the globe). Unfortunately I would suspect that the chocolates tasted we were past their best and should not actually be on sale still… I would be happy to send you fresh chocolates if you would like to critique them fairly.”

I was impressed that Lily O’Briens was so willing to stand behind their chocolates, and I was eager to take them up on their offer of a re-review. After all, I had bought the original chocolates from an Italian coffee shop in tourist trap Las Vegas, not exactly a place that would be worried about quality control and customer loyalty. When a generous package arrived from Ireland, and I happily ate my words, along with the chocolates they sent: one pouch each of their Chocolate Collection, their Sticky Toffee, their Crispy Hearts, and their Trufflicious (that name needs a noun, I thin), a two sets of their luxury bar assortments. This review is of the Chocolate Collection, which includes a sticky toffee and a honeycomb crisp (just like the crispy hearts, but not honeycomb shaped).

The Chocolate Collection, starting from the white chocolate cup going clockwise and finishing in the center, includes crème brûlée, hazelnut torte, honeycomb crisp, farmhouse ice cream, sticky toffee, lemon meringue pie, chocolat noir, and cookies ‘n’ cream. There was one of each and two of a few (the sticky toffee, the honeycomb crisp, and the chocolat noir, if I remember correctly), and I’m ashamed to say that over the course of a few days, I ate the entire pouch. What can I say; it’s that time of year when final papers are due and final exams are coming up.

crème brûlée - White chocolate shell with granulated sugar sprinkled over a white cap; white chocolate ganache filling and a touch of caramel sitting in the bottom of the shell. I don’t particularly like white chocolate. Still, the cup is a cute design.

hazelnut torte - one of my favorites of the bunch, this one was quite nutty. Like most hazelnut/chocolate combinations, it was sweet, but this one managed to be just shy of overly so. The ganache almost had a slight grain to it from the hazelnuts. I liked the textural difference.

honeycomb crisp - honeycomb and crispies in milk chocolate that was soooo much better than the stale crispy heart I bought in Vegas. The chocolate was creamy and yogurty rather than brittle, and though it was still on the sweet side, the sweetness was more bearable when the chocolate melted heavily on the tongue.

farmhouse ice cream - I also enjoyed this one, a dark chocolate shell around a white ganache. The ganache wasn’t white chocolate (I think). Instead, it tasted like fresh cream.

sticky toffee - the other one that I had originally panned. This time around in a fresh version, the “toffee” caramel was smooth and flowing with a slight butterscotch tinge. No grain and grit here. And again, the sweetness was helped by the proper melt of chocolate (whereas my Vegas ones were pretty brittle).

lemon meringue pie - milk chocolate shell, white chocolate button, bright lemony ganache. Didn’t make too much of an impression on me.

chocolat noir - dark chocolate shell and a lighter, sweeter, and fluffier dark chocolate ganache. I liked the dark chocolate the shell was made of, as it had a nice fruitiness to it. For those who are easing their way into enjoying dark chocolate, this dark chocolate was on the sweet side.

cookies ‘n’ cream - somehow, Lily O’Briens managed to get the a nice bit of cookie crumb grain into this one, a milk chocolate shell surrounding a white chocolate ganache studded with tiny chocolate chips. I was amused that there were actually more chocolate chips in the actual chocolate than in the photo of the chocolate on the box. Usually, it’s the other way around. This tastes overwhelmingly of white chocolate. I think I would have liked it better if it tasted more like the cream of the farm house ice cream.

So, Lily O’Briens, I owe you an apology. Your chocolates are tasty. They’re a little overly sweet for my palate, and the ganache fillings are almost on the greasy side, but I liked them enough to eat them all. Irish people do have good taste in chocolate. Hooray! An OM for the lot as a whole, with an OMG for the hazelnut torte and farmhouse ice cream.

As previously mentioned on Monday, my box of 9 of Vosges Exotic Truffles were samples sent by the company. I shared them with friends, which is the best way to savor fine chocolates. From left to right and top to bottom they are (the last two trio photos are slightly off, with the Ambrosia and Chef Pascal swapped):

Naga - sweet Indian curry powder + coconut + milk chocolate - I’ve had the Naga chocolate bar before and liked it, and I similarly enjoyed the curry dusted Naga truffle. The curry flavor is initially strong before it gets a bit mellowed by the coconut flavor coming through. The milk ganache balanced the two flavors well, and the truffle makes me think of Thai food.

Budapest - sweet Hungarian paprika + dark chocolate - Paprika isn’t really used in Chinese cooking, so I have no idea what its flavor profile is like. I found the Budapest to taste extremely, unpleasantly earthy. Even the more enjoyable dark chocolate finish wasn’t enough to make me like this truffle more. My friend Rita made a face and said it tasted like dirt, while my other friend Chris enjoyed it.

Gianduia - crunchy hazelnut praline + milk chocolate + praline bits - As I have said before, it’s hard to go wrong with the classic flavor combination of chocolate and hazelnut. The Gianduia’s hazelnut flavor was strong without being overpowering, and I found the nuttiness to be fresher and more genuine that anything Ferrero has ever made. The praline topping was also a nice, sweet, crunchy touch.

Black Pearl - ginger + wasabi + dark chocolate + black sesame seeds - When I tasted the bar version of the Black Pearl, I found its wasabi flavor to be absent. In the truffle, wasabi flavor is definitely there. It starts out tasting like ginger, and the wasabi rounds out the middle. I’m not a big fan of ginger and chocolate, but I can see why some people love it and how they would love this truffle.

Wink of the Rabbit - soft caramel + deep milk chocolate + organic New Mexican pecan - The top half of this interestingly named truffle is made of ganache, while the bottom half is made of a caramel that tastes like a soft toffee. I found it to be on the verge of sugar overload, and the organic New Mexican pecan (because pecan sourcing is soooo important, I guess) doesn’t add anything to the truffle or temper its sweetness.

Chef Pascal - kirsch + dark chocolate + dried Michigan cherry - This truffle has a strong liqueur flavor that I enjoyed. Eating this truffle is sort of like eating an uber fancy cherry cordial, except much better because the Vosges ganache is so rich and smooth and creamy.

Woolloomooloo - Australian macadamia nut + coconut + deep milk chocolate - The Woolloomooloo has a strong coconut flavor that tastes extremely and pleasantly fresh and a nice, dusky chocolate finish. I couldn’t taste the macadamia nut, but it was just fine without it.

Ambrosia - macadamia nuts + Cointreau + white chocolate - Like in the Woolloomooloo (man, is that fun to type!), the macadamia nuts are just too mildly flavored to stand out. The Cointreau (an orange liqueur) makes this truffle super sweet and fruity, and the white chocolate gives it a thickly sweet finish. I don’t particularly care for white chocolate, but I do appreciate the concept and flavor of this truffle.

Absinthe - Chinese star anise + fennel + pastis + dark chocolate + cocoa powder - I wasn’t expecting to like this truffle because I don’t like licorice or anise. I was right, sort of, as I didn’t like it, but I didn’t dislike it. The anise flavor is more reminiscent of Chinese five spice than of licorice. My licorice-loving suitemate enjoyed this.

I would not buy Vosges truffles for myself to eat because they’re so pricey, but I would buy them for others. The packaging is pretty, the truffles themselves are exquisitely gorgeous, the smooth and creamy ganaches are luxuriously indulgent, and the flavor combinations are unique and creative. An OMG, but only if someone else is buying.

I usually don’t finish the candy that I taste. Instead, I take a few bites and pass the rest on to friends, many of whom are happy to try my candy cast-offs even when my bite marks are on it. They’ll even polish off candy that I personally hated, so I almost never throw anything away. Note the “almost.” I found the Whitman’s Soho chocolates to be too terrible to inflict on my friends and tossed them after I tasted them. Individual, half-eaten chocolates aren’t that great for sharing in the first place, but I’ve done it before when the chocolates’ tastiness overrode the unappealing look of a chocolate with a bite missing. There was no redeeming the Soho line.

The “artist inspired” chocolates come in an attractive box, are prettily decorated, and have fancy sounding flavors: pear praline, sea salt caramel, madagascar vanilla brulee, pistachio nougat, cacao truffle, and raspberry ganache. Unfortunately, they all taste like blech.

The raspberry ganache, which I believe is the round dark chocolate one with the pretty gold swirls on top, had a creamy “ganache” that was way too sweet and tasted super artificial. I put ganache in quotation marks because the texture was that of a cream. I guess they called it a ganache because that sounds fancier.

The milk chocolate rectangle was pistachio nougat. It had absolutely no pistachio flavor, so I only managed to tell because it had little pieces of pistachio in it. A marvel of chocolate engineering. It just tasted generically sweet.

The milk chocolate square was the sea salt caramel, and the only one I managed to finish because it’s hard to make a terrible caramel. It is, however, easy to make a mediocre caramel, which was what this was: blandly sweet and chewy, with no saltiness, no butter or toffee notes, no anything.

I like my notes for the one with the white rounded top: “lemon - sharp acerbic lemon taste with horrific artificial aftertaste. Started out nice but EEK! Run away!” As you can see, there is no lemon flavored one, so I think it’s the pear praline.

The other flavor I was uncertain of was the dark chocolate rectangle. It was sweet and fruity with a slightly smoother, more flowy center than the others. I think it may be the Madagascar vanilla brulee. This one was okay, in that it was inoffensive.

And last but not least, the white, round chocolate with the flat top was the cacao truffle. Another inoffensively boring chocolate with a dry ganache and a slightly fruitiness to the filling that’s probably due to flavor mixing in the box.

I bought these for half off right after Valentine’s Day, and I still want a refund. I think we can extrapolate my notes from the pear praline and give the box a hearty EEK! Run away! They get an A+ for packing but an O (for offensive) for taste.

(Edit 10/25/09: Since my rating system’s changed, these now get a –. But then I lose the lame joke…)

I saw a box of Michel Cluizel’s Champignon truffles at Cafe Moka in the Houston airport but didn’t buy them because they were so pricey. It was a choice I regretted. Thankfully, Viva Chocolato opened in Austin, and they carry lots of truffles by Michel Cluizel, including Les Champignons. Hooray! I bought one of the Champignons and a 99 Cacaoforte (the first and fourth in the lineup).

Les Champignons (French for The Mushrooms, by the way) are gorgeous and adorable. The cap is made of chocolate and filled with a crunchy toffee-like almond nougatine. It’s sweet and delicious. The stem is made of a soft, sticky, and super chewy caramel surrounded by white and dark chocolate. The caramel itself is not terribly sweet and instead tastes strongly of butter. They get an enthusiastic OMG, with a letter off for being so pricey.

I was nervous about trying the 99 Cacaoforte because they are made of 99% cacao. I’ve tasted a 100% cacao bar from La Maison du Chocolat (it was bitter, creamy, and good, but I could only handle a tiny bit at a time), and I’ve eaten raw cacao nibs before. Neither were entirely pleasant tasting adventures, so I was afraid the 99 Cacaoforte would be too much for my palate to handle.

The truffle was super dark, of course, but surprisingly enough, I didn’t find it bitter at all. It certainly wasn’t sweet, but it was far more palatable than the pure cacao I’ve tasted. The ganache was super smooth, thick, and almost paste-like. It had no grain, but it wasn’t exactly creamy, probably because there should be no milk or cream added to the ganache. It tasted of smooth, pure cacao, and it was splendid. I found it sophisticated, intense, and ZOMG!-worthy. Next time I come across one of these, I’m definitely splurging again, as it’s worth every penny.

Edit: According to Sera, I was misinformed about the nature of the Cacaoforte. The enrobing is 99% Cacao, but the filling is a ganache made with the 99%, meaning that there is cream in there.

Choxie is Target’s house brand of chocolate. While Target purports to sell stylish clothes for less, Choxie promises fancy chocolate for cheap. The back of the box sums up their philosophy nicely: “crafted with the finest and purest ingredients, it’s intended for the most sophisticated of chocolate palates. we suggest you keep it hidden from mere amateurs.” Sorry, Choxie, but you can’t fool me with your fake trendiness and refusal to use capital letters. But I do like the bright and vaguely retro packaging. Great color scheme!

The key lime pie truffle bar is “key lime-flavored white chocolate and graham biscotti bits enrobed in dark chocolate.” What I got was a way too sweet bar with a strong limey finish. I swear I tasted grains of sugar in the filling along with the scattered chunks of graham cracker.

The graham “biscotti” (I guess that’s fancier-sounding than graham cracker) bits were just crumbs. I think the bar could have benefited from slightly larger bits of the graham to make the texture more interesting and to balance out the sweet white chocolate.

The filling was too sugary, and the dark chocolate enrobing was too bland or too weak to balance it out. My bar had bloomed, which was unfortunate, and it gave the chocolate a greasy feel and an unappetizing look (though bloomed chocolate is perfectly safe to eat). The dark chocolate didn’t have a great melt - it was nowhere near as smooth or as creamy as the Dagoba and Theo bars - and the snap was rather weak and brittle.

Some of my friends liked the flavor combination (many of them thought it was lemon) but found fault with the texture. Others were not fans of the citrus addition and thought it was too weird. It did fairly well in the taste ratings: 9th place out of 13 with a score 3.17/5, placing it higher than many fancier, more expensive bars. From me, an O. I may have been too hard on Choxie because I was tasting it alongside other, nicer bars, so I haven’t completely written off the brand yet. I’d like to try some of their other truffle bars and see if they can redeem themselves.

Bar number 2 from the Hebert’s Fully Loaded lineup. The Rocky Road boasts “Rich Milk CHOCOLATE with Walnuts, Dark Chocolate & Marshmallow Pieces.” Thank goodness the wrapper for this one is less frenetic than that of the Dark Turtle.

Walnuts were a much better choice for a Fully Loaded bar than the pecan pralines of the Dark Turtle. While the sugary pralines overpowered the chocolate, the walnuts nicely complemented the sweet milk chocolate with their bland nuttiness and added a good textural mix.

The dark chocolate bits didn’t distinguish themselves in any way, and I didn’t make any note of marshmallow pieces in my blind tasting notes. Alicia tasted this bar and said that the marshmallow pieces were actually white chocolate. The milk chocolate base was pretty good quality, though nothing standout or exceptional. It actually came out of the wrapper looking pretty greasy but didn’t taste that way (thank goodness).

Like the other Hebert’s bar, I can see why this would be appealing, but again, it just doesn’t do anything for me. I just find it too busy, like it’s trying too hard. Another OM from me, another high rating from my friends: second place with a 3.86/5. I have two Hebert’s bars (Dark Apple Cider and Dark Margarita Lime) that I picked up after my chocolate party. I think they may be truffle bars, and I’m excited to taste them.

Earlier this week, my friend Cassie took me to That Popcorn Place on the downtown Drag near UT. What a wonderful food find! They’ve got dozens and dozens of flavors of popcorn, from the savory (ranch, cajun, sour cream and onion, bacon and cheese) to the candied (caramel, vanilla, orange) to the decadent gourmet (s’mores, cookies and cream, dark chocolate), and oh man are they good!

In accordance with Austin’s Keep Austin Weird philosophy, That Popcorn Place is a literal mom and pop operation. Mark, the “Pop” of the business, was in the shop when we stopped by, and he’s the most gregarious proprietor I’ve ever had the pleasure to come across. He gladly answered all of my questions about the shop and the popcorn and was incredibly generous with the free samples (the portions of which were also generous). In fact, I had to stop him from bringing out even more flavors for us to try because I couldn’t finish it all. I think if we had asked, he would have let me taste every one of his 50+ flavors. Believe me, I felt bad about turning down free samples and leaving popcorn behind on the counter.

I walked out with a small sized (about 9 cups) mix of some of their savory flavors (ranch, loaded potato, and cajun) and a snack sized (about 3 cups) bag of three of their decadent gourmet flavors: s’mores, dark chocolate, and cinnamon roll. Each bag was only $4.50 (the decadent gourmet is more expensive because it’s loaded with chocolate), a popcorn steal. For the record, the snack sized bag was packed full to the brim when I bought it; I ate a bunch on the way home because I just couldn’t resist.

As you can probably guess, I absolutely loved the decadent gourmet popcorn. I tried the cookies and cream (vanilla popcorn tumbled with oreo pieces) in the store and didn’t like it enough to buy it, but even that was good enough for me to polish off my handful of free sample. I ended up choosing cinnamon roll because Mark said that was his favorite and the one he was most proud of, s’mores because the three other customers in the store at the time ordered it, so we figured it had to be good, and dark because Cassie wanted to try it. Mark was wonderful about letting us mix flavors in the bag, so don’t be afraid to ask for that if you’re able to visit them in person. And if you order online, it couldn’t hurt to try and ask for that same accommodation. Or you could just buy a bag of each flavor - it’s worth it!

The cinnamon roll is their caramel bliss popcorn with a hint of cinnamon and drizzled in white chocolate. It has just the right touch of cinnamon - strong enough to make its presence known but not so strong that it overpowers the caramel. The white chocolate is a great evocation of cinnamon roll icing, and it’s good quality chocolate too. The caramel layer is perfect - thick enough to get stuck in your teeth a little, but no so thick that it stays stuck there. The thinness of the caramel layer also gives the popcorn a little bit of a chew and a crunch without making it difficult to bite down, like some other caramel popcorn gets.

The s’mores was their caramel popcorn plus mini marshmallows, graham cracker crumbs, and a heavy drizzle of milk chocolate. At first I thought the mini marshmallows were just bits of white chocolate, but nope, actual marshmallow bits. The texture was dry and almost styrofoamy, but the pieces were too tiny for the texture to be noticeable unless you very carefully nibbled apart a marshmallow bit on its own, and the marshmallow taste was spot on. I couldn’t really taste the graham cracker crumbs through the heavy chocolate coating, but every once in a while I’d get a large piece of cracker, and then I could taste it. It couldn’t hurt for them to use larger bits of graham cracker. Finally, the milk chocolate was really good - sweet, smooth, and creamy. I wish I’d thought to ask Mark what brand of chocolate they used.

We asked Mark to throw in just a few pieces of dark, and I didn’t really notice any in our bag. I think that’s because the milk chocolate of the s’mores was so nice that it approaches what some companies try to pass off as dark, because the sweetness of the caramel probably undid the lower sugar content of dark chocolate’s flavor, and because I tore through my bag of popcorn pretty quickly. An enthusiastic ZOMG!!! for the lot. Extra exclamation points for top notch customer service.

I hope That Popcorn Place will be open on Saturday so I can buy more to bring back to New Haven with me. If not, they’ll be one of the first places I visit when I’m home for winter break. They also offer online ordering, though it means missing out on the in store experience! I may resort to that if I need a popcorn fix in the spring semester. The shipping and handling gets a little pricey, but the popcorn is so well-priced that I think I could afford the splurge. They also have cute gift tin options, and I personally would be delighted to receive this popcorn as a gift.

In case you’re wondering, the savory flavors were incredibly, ZOMG!-worthily delicious too. I won’t write about them here because they’re not candy-related, but they’re gooooood, and you should buy some. I especially like the cajun, and the dill pickle is weirdly intriguing.