Vosges Bars: Habana

I won’t lie: one thing that drew me to the Vosges Habana bar was the deep purple packaging, which stood out from the white-based packaging used for many of their bars. I love purple, and I love chocolate, so this bar and I found each other in the Vosges boutique.

Packaging isn’t enough to get me to buy chocolate, but promises of Ecuadorian plantain chips and deep milk chocolate mixed together are. I first learned about plantains from a fellow hailing from Nicaragua who lived on the same hall as me in college, and he knew how to make delicious plantain-based creations. The memory of my friend and the purple had me hooked, so this bar came back to DC with me.

Inside the attractive purple packaging is a bar tightly wrapped in foil to keep the flavors pure. Nice touch that you get with all the Vosges bars.

Under that foil wrapper is a smooth-looking milk chocolate, but the plantain chips weren’t evident from visual inspection. I was left to eat it to affirm that plantain bits were, in fact, in there.

I assure you that they were. The experience of the bar, as a whole, was like eating super-silky milk chocolate at the same time as some terra chips. There was some crisp vegetable/fruit starch, some salt, and some creamy milk chocolate. The plantains featured prominently, and were brought out by the sea salt incorporated into the bar. The chocolate, while not overpowered by the plantains, was not front and center. It's a delicious treat that the Tenleytown whole foods has fortunately started carrying recently, and I'll certainly eat it again, but, like many Vosges bars, it's about the whole creation rather than highlighting the chocolate.