The battle of the chocolate continues. I’ve taste-tested Swedish Marabou and Finnish Karl Fazer. Now I’m trying Estonian chocolate.
Estonian chocolate is called Kalev, which as far as I can tell, is named after a character in the Kalevala, which is a Finnish national epic. Estonia seems to be trying to stake a claim on it though, what with the Kalev chocolate and the Kalev spa.
Kalev chocolate comes in flavours we don’t necessarily see in Britain. Plum, apricot, rhubarb and raspberry are not so common here. Orange with almond. Everything with almond. In fact, the only plain chocolate – and by plain, I mean milk chocolate but without almond/plum/biscuit/coffee etc etc – I could find was the kind with pictures of Tallinn on. Everything else has proper, respectable chocolate wrappers but the plain stuff has pretty pictures on. This makes it look like tourist souvenir chocolate, ie bad, cheap chocolate that just tastes of powder and misery but in fact, the packet is concealing good chocolate. Really quite good chocolate. Creamy and chocolatey and good.
Sadly, they don’t appear to make orange without almonds, which is a shame because I’m fond enough of orange chocolate to have bought two massive Karl Fazer bars at the airport (forgetting I actually prefer Marabou), but I did – eventually – find hazelnut. I love hazelnut. Not the kind with actual hazelnuts in but like praline, that creamy pasty filling. The downside is that this time it looks like it’s made for three-year-olds but we’ll see what it’s like inside.
Verdict: brilliant. It tastes a bit like the green triangles from Quality Street, only in bar form and with just a touch of crunch. Oh, I wish I’d brought a lot more of this back with me! 10/10 no question. I like this very much.