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Alec Wilson's avatar

Arguably your most important post. A few thoughts from someone who mostly agrees:

* A lot of specific chocolates are more or less properly rated when discussed specifically - bad chocolate is bad, excellent chocolate is generally excellent. The problem is that as a flavor, chocolate is wildly overrated (especially, as you nod to, relative to fruit desserts), so when people see the word “chocolate”, without specifics as to the quality, they get blinded by the Hershey’s PR machine (I don’t know who runs it now, but I assume Hershey initially ran the PR push).

* Almost all chocolate can be improved with salt, and most salted chocolate is under salted. Dick Taylor does the best job of making their “with sea salt” product actually salty.

* You are entirely correct about vanilla, and I personally think the best vanilla ice cream is miles better than the best chocolate. Vanilla has the opposite problem - bad vanilla ice cream is just fine, which contributes to its reputation as the safe, boring choice. One thing I deeply miss from living in Texas is Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream, the best vanilla ice cream I’ve had that’s available in stores (even better, Strawberries & Homemade Vanilla, which is the perfect strawberry ice cream - vanilla, with strawberries).

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John's avatar

'Sees title' <rubs hands> "Here we go!"

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