According to their website, Lily O’Briens is one of Ireland’s top chocolatiers. From the two I tasted, a crispy heart and a sticky toffee, either Ireland has poor chocolatiers or Lily O’Briens is quite overrated.
Edit: Lily O’Briens believes that my chocolates were past their best-by date and have offered to send me fresh samples so I can give them a fair shake. I respect companies that stand behind their products, so I’ll re-review Lily O’Briens.
I actually picked this box up from an Italian coffeehouse/gelato place in the Venetian on the Las Vegas strip. The right is the sticky toffee, and the left is the crispy heart (duh).
The sticky toffee is toffee as the Europeans would describe it. In other words, it’s what we could consider a caramel. I found it to be grainy and gritty. The chocolate shell and its filling were overly sweet, and I had no urge to have more than my tasting bite. Not a good sign.
The crispy heart had bits of crisped rice that was a bright yellow. My initial notes describe it as a saffron yellow, but I now think it is yellow because it’s made of honeycomb. Either way, it’s not enough crispies to temper the sweetness of the chocolate shell. I liked the crispy heart better than the sticky toffee, as it reminded me of a Nestle Crunch bar, but I still found it cloying.
An O for the box. Granted, since I bought it from a coffeehouse and not a chocolate shop, and since it may have been imported, my box probably was not exactly fresh. But still, I wouldn’t recommend Lily O’Briens’ chocolates based on the ones I got to taste.
Varsha