A few weeks back, we had the pleasure of meeting Alex Rast of seventypercent.com. Alex was visiting from England and met up with us at Sunita’s Chocolate Garage. Alex is a guy who really knows his chocolate. We spent many hours discussing his take on pretty much everything chocolate-related, like the best way ship chocolate (wrapped in wool), the best ways to cool (metal molds on a marble slab), and the best flavor notes (strawberry and treacle).
So we were pretty excited when he posted a positive review of one of our bars. We’ve been so focused on meeting demand and just making a chocolate bar that we like, that it’s always nice to hear that others like them too. Here’s a snippet from his review of our last Madagascar harvest:
Melt, too, is rather felicitously above Dandelion’s usual, being smooth and creamy, and providing the appropriate finishing touch to an excellent effort. In many ways Dandelion seems to be following a similar trajectory to Amano in the early days, a company which as we have seen has gone from strong initial promise to world-class maturity. In fact, the Madagascar, it must be said, is even more accomplished than Amano’s early efforts, and this bodes well for the future. Is there room for improvement with this chocolate? Perhaps slightly. The roast could be ever that bit lighter, perhaps balanced with a slightly longer conche, but these are very much small tweaks. As is, this chocolate sets something of a benchmark for up-and-coming manufacturers: Dandelion is clearly the company to beat in the third generation of artisan chocolate producers.
You can see his full review, plus reviews of many other great bars at seventypercent.com.