I may have eaten more chocolate over the last 2 weeks than I’ve ever eaten in a 2-week span because dammit if the Ritter-Sport people didn’t send us like 9 chocolate bars. You know Ritter… they’re the Euro-choco bars next to the cash register in your favorite fancy food store, priced between 2-3 bucks each, and you wonder who’s actually paying this much for chocolate?

I have no idea who is paying for what but I can tell you this: Ritter-Sport chocolate is good. Perhaps the best of the mid higher-end bars. Also, you get a lot. Don’t let the square package fool ya – these things have some heft, almost a quarter pound per bar, and even fat ol’ me couldn’t eat an entire package in one sitting. You may pay $2.99 but yr getting two solid feastings out of it.

Ritter sent us a bunch of choco bars because they are rolling out new flavors – like strawberry creme. At least I think some of these are new. (Go to the Ritter-Sport site. They have a great Flash experience on there, and they list a ton of bar types.) Some of them may sound run o’ the mill but none of these taste ordinary. I was sent 9 bars and I (tried to) eat 2 of them right away – the milk choco with hazelnuts and strawb cream. Then I saved some for a video review with Jonny et al. And then we played golf. And had a bit to drink and lost all semblance of what people like to watch on video, and so now this review is a little prose and a crappy vid all rolled into one.


Onto the bars!


Milk Chocolate with Hazelnuts: European milk chocolate taste. Oppo of Hershey. Not bitter and blah. But creamy soft. Big and thick too (like I mentioned before). Had to split the whole bar with wifey. Also the hazelnuts are ridiculous. Just roasted and whole. Not pieces. Milk chocolate isn’t usually my thing but this is yummy. Also had Milk Chocolate with Almonds. Similar – huge nuts. Dark chocolate with Hazelnuts. Same as above. Add dark.

Strawberry Creme: I thought I’d hate these so I went at them second. Who saves the crappiest for last? Not me. And then as the fates would have it, these didn’t suck. The chocolate was good, even though it was milk chocolate. Dark chocolate, as all us adults know, is better. The strawberry creme filling in the bar was a tad too sweet for me but it had a nice, fake strawberry flavor. Like Strawberry Quik but made with good ingredients. I like Strawberry Quik so this worked for me. There were little crunchies in there too. I think they should have named this bar chocolate strawberry “crunch” instead of “creme.” It would have made me more interested in the bar if I was buying it, and I would have had that knowing nod when I bit in and felt the crunch. This bar, as it appears for all of these Ritter bars, are pretty big- you may think they’re offering a smallish chocolate square bar but in reality you’re getting a bigger, thicker and more dense chunk of chocolate. I ate this at midnight on a Friday. I got through 3/4 of it before I had to stop. Just too much. If my better half was awake or if I had any friends over, I would have gladly shared. This is a bar for 2.

Alpine Milk Chocolate: Good. Fine. Better than fine. If yr a milk choco fan, you’ll love. Reminds me of the Swiss Alp…oh my gawd that’s why they named it that!!! ahem.

Dark Chocolate: Yummy but could be even a bit more bitter for my taste, but a solid 7.

Butter Biscuit: Super good. It tasted like they had fudge inside of them. Fudge and a “bicky” (that’s what the English might call a cookie). They were crunchy and fudgy and creamy. I loved these. Here’s what we shot some video of, when we made our last review for NEXT (organics…) but this video is shit so I’m posting only 32 secs.

Enjoy:

Pfefferminz: peppermint. Like a reallly good York Peppermint patty. But thicker, better chocolate. I never think I’m gonna love mint chocolate bars but I always do, and this is one of the better ones out there. I’d put this in the top 3 of the 9. If York patties are your thing, then buy this.

Yogurt: eh. My least favorite. The cream in the middle tasted like yogurt, good since that’s the point, and it wasn’t super sweet, but the texture of the yogurt wasn’t thick enough for me – it didn’t feel like yogurt. Also, I like yogurt cold and this wasn’t. Maybe the bar would have been better if it was fridged first.


That’s a mess of chocolate bar reviews. Let’s end with a poem, shall we?


Ritter oh Ritter, oh Ritter oh Sport
Sent me 9 bars, not one too short.
I ate them all
Now fat, not tall
Ritter oh RItter, oh Ritter oh Sport