|
For those who follow our snack blog, you may realize it's been a few months since we last posted. That's because we've been scaling up World of Snacks! We've moved into a larger warehouse and will be adding even more exciting snacks from around the world in the near future! Another project we have been working on is our upcoming Subscription Snack Box. In order to prepare we've been doing a ton of research and subscribing to a bunch of boxes from a variety of businesses. Of course, we don't want to share our feedback on our direct competitors but one of the boxes we've subscribed to (that doesn't specialize in international snacks) arrived this month with a chocolate bar – so we thought it'd be fun to highlight it here on our snack blog.  The subscription box we are referring to is from Robb Report, a high-end publication (magazine) that I've enjoyed for years. Dubbed Robb Vices, each month a box arrives filled with a curated collection of luxury items. This month the box included our snack under review, the K+M Extravirgin Chocolate bar. If you look close, you can see it towards the bottom of the box.  K+M stands for Thomas Keller and Armando Manni. Mr. Keller is a the first and only American-born chef to hold multiple three-star ratings from the prestigious Michelin Guide. So he's a pretty big deal. Mr. Manni is from Tuscany and has an equally impressive reputation for quality by producing antioxidant-rich, extra-virgin olive oils.  These two rockstars have joined forces to offer this snack, "a revolutionary extravirgin chocolate high in antioxidants." Typical chocolate bars loose most of their antioxidants when the bean is roasted. These guys worked with the University of Florence in Italy and developed a method for processing each batch of cocoa beans to best preserve the antioxidants, making a bar that boasts serious health benefits (which you can read about below).  So as you can see, this isn't your everyday chocolate bar. They've done their homework and did a great job packaging it all together. With a $15 a bar price tag, we wouldn't expect any less. Now, onto what you've all been waiting for – the taste test!  Some of you may have noticed, this bar is 75% Peruvian. This is the first single origin chocolate we've highlighted here on our international snack blog. So needless to say, we were excited to sample it. The chocolate had a nice satin finish. It was smooth, but not oily. It felt good, and it was easy to realize this was a high-end bar just by the touch (as if the packaging didn't give it away). It had an earthy aroma that only hinted toward a typical chocolate bar. The bite was firm and the chocolate crumbled nicely when bitten. The flavor was mild at first but slowly became more intense. It was slightly bitter and seemed to have a subtle sweet after-bite. The first few pieces had a unique olive oil flavor but it eventually went away with more pieces. So what does all that mean? Was it good? Yes! Well at least I thought so. We had two other tasters and myself and another enjoyed it (our 14 year old Director of Taste). Our third tester didn't appreciate the flavor. Overall it was an enjoyable experience and we are glad it was included in our Robb Vices subscription box. Will World of Snacks offer the K+M Extravirgin Chocolate Bar for sale in the international snack store? Maybe someday in the future. We do intend to expand our inventory to include high-end chocolate bars from around the world. However, we have much to do before we get to that point. So for now, check out these chocolate bars – we think you'll like them!
Comments
World of Snacks has spent the last 15 months searching for the best snacks in the world. So far we’ve reviewed candy, cookies, and chips from 33 different countries. One country we have yet to visit is Peru. So today we are going to sample a Peruvian Snack that is produced in San Francisco.
Typically we strive to highlight imported foreign snacks or much loved American snacks. Recently we’ve been contacted by a handful of start-up companies looking to get word out about their products. Being we are still in the early years of our snack empire, we feel taking a look at these unique items is definitely worthwhile. We also love testing new flavors with our panel. So when Nazqiz sent us a few of their Qancha Air Roasted Peruvian Corn Snacks we were so excited we moved them to the top of our review list.
Our sample from Nazqiz arrived quickly and included all three of their current flavors- Original, Chimichurri, and Picante. The packaging is fresh, modern, and very fitting for the product. This Peruvian snack comes in a resalable black bag, with a small amount of the product pictured in the center. Centered along the top is the Nazqiz logo, to the left of the logo it reads “Tasty Latin Crunch” and to right “Made in California”. The packages also mentions that this snack is gluten-free, contains no trans-fats, and is made of all natural ingredients. On each of the Qancha flavors there is a colored bar along the bottom that mentions the flavor and has a fun line drawing. Our favorite is the Picante Latin Spice, the drawing is of a spider and it reads “Wild and Wicked like The Spider.” Enough of how these look, let’s get on with our taste test of this brand new snack!
Being Nazqiz took the time to reach out to us and provide the items under review we decided to utilize a large taste test groups of 7 adult US males aged 25-35. All except myself are US born and are from the South Eastern portion of the country. We sampled each flavor individually.
Our last sampling was the Qancha Original Lightly Salted Corn Snack. Maybe we should have started with this version. Being we went with the more exciting flavors first, the original was just mildly appetizing. This version alludes to a slightly un-popped pop corn kernel. Everyone enjoyed the lightly salted flavor, but none of our testers ranked this version above the other flavors.
Will World of Snacks offer Qancha Air Roasted Peruvian Corn Snacks in our international snack store? Not at the moment. Right now we are focusing on carrying classic snacks from a handful of countries. So where can you buy Nazqiz Qancha? If you live in California there is a list of locations on their site. If you are looking to buy this snack online their homepage also includes details for that. If you are looking for other unique snacks we encourage to check out our featured country this month and take a look at our German Snacks. Each month this year we are adding a new country and their best cookies, cakes, candy, and chips to our store. If you would like to be notified as we expand be sure to like us on facebook or leave your details to the right. Keep on snacking world!
|
