Lindt isn’t that good. They market themselves as premium but they kind of fail from a flavour perspective. Completely flat and uninteresting.

Hershey's chocolate is so disgusting. They literally add vomit flavor to it.

I started buying Tony's because I oppose slavery, I keep buying it because it's very good tasting

Completely unasked-for protip if you ever find yourself in Zurich - do the Lindt Home of Chocolate tour (building is fucking gorgeous and the tour is pretty cool), but don't be a sucker and visit the shop in the lobby. There's a factory outlet at the back of the property.

I know as a random American, chances are you won't need this information, but I feel I got played when I walked out with my fancy bag of redic-balls expensive chocolate a few months ago (part of that was the CAD > CHF exchange rate, but still)

I don't even know for sure if the chocolate is less expensive at the back, but noting the number of Swiss coming out of the outlet v. The Home of Chocolate, and difference in bag quality, it probably is.

Also you might see these cars on the way back there, which are adorable af.

And fyi Marabou used to be Swedish but is now also owned by Mondalez together with some of the brands in the upper part of the illustration.

Or... Garant. They have surprisingly good chocolate, especially the dark ones with raspberries or cranberries are delicious.

Several years ago my daughter's school had a trip to a (small, local) chocolate factory.

For part of the trip the children queued up to dip a marshmallow into a vat of chocolate to taste it.

My daughter was one of the first in the queue, ate hers and went to the back of the queue for a second one... I was so proud 😁

fuck. my chocolatier is probably going to be booked solid during valentimes. i should go on a date this saturday and get some sipping cocoa

Yes, double win if you buy Tony's pro european and anti slavery.

As milk chocolates go, Fazer is top-tier stuff.

Butyric acid in case anyone is wondering. Literally a product of digestion, so you taste it when you throw up:

Highly-fermentable fiber residues, such as those from resistant starch, oat bran, pectin, and guar are transformed by colonic bacteria into short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) including butyrate, producing more SCFA than less fermentable fibers such as celluloses.[13][21] One study found that resistant starch consistently produces more butyrate than other types of dietary fiber.[22] The production of SCFA from fibers in ruminant animals such as cattle is responsible for the butyrate content of milk and butter.[23]

They literally put vomit flavor in their chocolate!!!

They are great, here in my hometown (Nottingham, UK) we have a little place called Louisa's, and as far as I'm aware, she's the only vegan chocolate maker in the UK. She does direct trade with small family farms so that everyone gets paid fairly (direct trade > fair trade), she also knows a lot about the cocoa plant and so will visit her farmers to help them grow better beans and ensure these farms are run in an ethical fashion.

Her chocolate is absolutely divine too, if you can, order from her.

Warning, it's pricey, but hopefully you'll understand why!

They also make good fucking chocolate.

Head and shoulders above most other crap, especially the ones on the top of the picture.

Definition of a conundrum: the only place around me that sells Tony's chocolate is Wal-Mart.

My only gripe is that it's impossible to break off two equal pieces, which makes sharing needlessly difficult.

I'd say Tony's would be your best bet? Not using slave labor is their stated goal, no idea how much they stick to it in reality

It's not an opinion. Chocolate in the US tastes like wax and vegetable oil.

I really like Ritter choccolate, but I find the motto really funny: you can't get more German than describing your chocolate (something you eat) first as square, second as practical, and only third, and last, as good 😆

And they have their own fair sourcing of cocoa with no slave/child labour

Yep, it's a Dutch brand!

Toney is also ethical chocolate as the aim is to make the chocolate trade more fair for chocolate farmers. That's also why it's a bit expensive and it's why it is divided the way it is. It's a symbolic representation of how unfairly the chocolate industry distributes the wealth. Next time you buy a Toney bar, try and read the text inside the wrapping paper. Their mission is stated there if I remember correctly.

But you can break off fun, quirkly-sized chunks!! Didn't I see somewhere it was supposed to be a map of something?

Also, I had no idea until this post that it wasn't made in the US. I love Chocolonely.

Edit, from the Chocolonely site:

Why are your bars unequally divided?

It doesn’t make sense for chocolate bars to be divided into equal-sized chunks when there is so much inequality in the chocolate industry! The unequally-sized chunks of our 180g bars are a palatable way of reminding Choco Fans and Serious Friends that the profits in the chocolate industry are unequally divided.

And in case you haven’t noticed, the bottom of our bars depicts the West African coastline. The chunks just above it represent the Gulf of Guinea. From left to right, you have Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin (terribly politically incorrect, we know, but we had to combine them to create enough space for a hazelnut), Nigeria and part of Cameroon.

I'd gone through about three bars (not in one sitting, lol) before I realised it's not Tony Chocoloney, it's Tony ChocoLONELY. And I felt bad and sad.

I still really want to visit their shop in Amsterdam though.

You can find good local chocolates. As with so many things, you need to avoid the big businesses.

if you are in the bay area, check out dandelion in san francisco. they make pretty good chocolate. the stuff you can get in stores is all too chalky for me. theirs is not chalky.

A lot of stuff are disappearing from the Belgian factories. They stopped producing the Melocakes a little while ago too.

Plus they use a ton of palm tree oil, so there's the environmental impact in top of that.

For those who don't speak Finnish...

The dark almond sea salt from Tony's is. Ritter Sport and Lindt also have some vegan products, Haribo probably too.

Never heard of Polish chocolate. Will have to find and see if I can get any way over here.

Can recommend Canadian choc as well: Purdy's and Laura Secord at the very least.

someone at work brought in Polish chocolate. i scoffed at first but then tried it. really good.

edit - checked when I got home. it is E. Wedel.

Netherlands

Dutch, according to their Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony's_Chocolonely

I got pistachio spread in Aldi and the taste is similar it made me realise how it is all the same base ingredients, sugar and oil.