$10 "bean to bar" chocolates were made from melted down Valrhona

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If you want us to send you some chips all you need to do is ask!

My current fave is feta and black olive.

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Olives are an abomination.
I have to go set something I love on fire now, since you brought up olives.

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I suppose I shouldn’t tell you that its tradition in my family to get a jar of green olives in ones xmas stocking and eat them, before breakfast, on xmas morning?

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picky eaters. what ya’ gonna do?

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Eat all their olives apparently! :slight_smile:

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Olives are posers that wish they were capers.

Hmm…

Caper and cheese chocolate?

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I like both, together, at the same time, also throw in some black olives and you got the start of a nice puttanesca!

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Can we politely agree to disagree on this issue. I am sure there are foodstuffs that you would give me the evil eye for not liking…

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Olives are his krypotonite apparently. Which is fine, all the more for me! :slight_smile:

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Hey share some with me… :slight_smile:

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Deal! Olives for everyone that wants them! This is a non-olive-judgement zone!

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(You can tell that I only mildly dislike olives, but take a hard line against them to stay in character, right?)

Right, back to it.

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I should try and get some of these.

Never liked them, but they were always there at Christmas.

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Please no, if you are getting dates, go for the medjool dates.

But for tradition, that’s an other story :wink: Cream cheese with them?

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From what I gather from a number of articles that’s in part what they were doing. The issue is they seem to have made a number of different contradictory statement as to their use of commercial chocolate and what for. Repackaging Valrhona chocolate with a few additions as their own, just repackaging it with no alteration, cutting their chocolate with Valrhona, and using Valrhona’s product for product development and testing, among other things. Its all pretty dodgy.

As for their marketing. Its always pissed me off. At a certain point they were implying that they were the only bean to bar manufacturer out there (not saying, just implying). Which makes no sense, because as you point out technically Hershey’s is bean to bar. As is every commercial producer including Valrhona. As for being the “first”. They weren’t even the first in NY. There were a bunch of craft chocolate producers in NYC at the time, including several bean to bar operations. Including Jacques Torres who opened his factory a full 3 years before the Mast Brothers turned up. I had a friend who staged with him for a brief period. He was scratch making chocolate in NY even before that, even if only experimentally. Most of these craft products were/are both cheaper and better than Mast’s stuff.

What the Mast brothers did was turn craft chocolate into a mainstream, mass market product. Primarily by glomming onto an already well established “Made in Brooklyn” aesthetic. Given that approach it makes sense that they would cut corners, and that their product would be both more expensive and less tasty than the competitors they’re emulating.

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So, we all should finish a great night out by eating our dates?

//runs for cover

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Perhaps the best Christmas morning tradition I have heard of!

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Uh oh. It’s been real, but I’m afraid I don’t love you anymore.

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