Ghirardelli’s Salt Sea Soiree Chocolate Bars Are More Nutty Than Salty.

The Good: Good taste, Decent size, Generally natural ingredients
The Bad: More nutty than I like, Somewhat expensive, Not as dark as I would prefer.
The Basics: Ghirardelli Sea Salt Soiree chocolate bars are more loaded with nuts than any sort of chocolate and salt blend!


My wife surprised me last holiday season with more chocolates that she thought would intrigue me. She is usually right, too. No one has ever been as successful at picking winners for my tastebuds than my wife. Knowing that I like both chocolate and salt (I’ve been known to put green onion cream cheese on my chocolate chip bagel!), she made an educated guess when she picked up the Ghirardelli Sea Salt Soiree chocolate bar. Unfortunately, what she didn’t count on was that Sea Salt Soiree is a surprisingly nutty bar.

As one who is not wowed by nuts and chocolate, Sea Salt Soiree fell dramatically short of my hopes, though it was a good chocolate bar.

Basics

Ghirardelli Sea Salt Soiree chocolate bars are one and a half inch squares of chocolate that are about three-quarter of an inch thick and connected to one another to form a bar that is four long, two wide. The entire bar comes wrapped in a bronze wrapper and the bar is packaged in a cardboard sleeve to protect it in transit. As part of Ghirardelli’s Intense Dark chocolate line, these bars are made as a premium product.

One of these bars tends to run in the $5.00 range, so this is a candy intended to be savored, not gobbled up!

Ease Of Preparation

These are candy, so preparing them is as simple as opening the box and then unwrapping foil wrapper from around the actual chocolate square(s) one wishes to eat. The seams between the different segments make it exceptionally easy to break the bar apart and leave the rest of it intact. There is no grand secret to eating the Ghirardelli Sea Salt Soiree chocolate bar.

Taste

The Ghirardelli Sea Salt Soiree chocolates smell like darker chocolate than they actually are. Perhaps it is the roasted almonds inside, but this semi-sweet chocolate smells like a full blown dark chocolate and that is very inviting for someone like me who loves the dark chocolate!

On the tongue, though, the flavor is rich but the taste of dark chocolate quickly melts away to a nutty flavor and then comes a salty kick! It is hard not to give Ghirardelli a lot of credit for at least creating a chocolate that has a lot of flavor layers to it! The Salt Sea Soiree does have that. Unfortunately, it never kicks the salt up enough to even rival M&M’s Pretzel candies (reviewed here!). As a result, the nuts overwhelm the salt and drag this chocolate down into being a mildly intriguing, nutty chocolate.

Nutrition

These are candy, so they are not particularly healthy. The Ghirardelli Intense Dark Sea Salt Soiree chocolate bars are not nearly as bad as they could be. The primary ingredients are Semi-sweet chocolate, almonds and sea salt. There is nothing unpronounable in these candies and that was pretty reassuring.

A serving of the Ghirardelli Sea Salt Soiree chocolate bar is considered three segments (squares). From three squares, one takes in 190 calories, including 13 grams of fat. There is no cholesterol, 50 mg sodium, and 3 g protein, but no vitamins in these chocolate squares. There is, surprisingly enough, 10% of one's daily iron and 2% Calcium in three squares, so that is a plus.

These are not Vegan-compliant, nor are they recommended for anyone with a nut allergy as they include a lot of almonds. They are, however, (surprisingly enough) kosher.

Storage/Clean-up

The bars of these Ghirardelli Sea Salt Soiree chocolate squares remain fresh for quite some time. I could not find any expiration date on the bar. One assumes that if they are kept in a cool, dry environment they will not melt or go bad. Given that they are foil wrapped in a fairly sealed package, it is hard to imagine just what it would take for these to go bad outside melting and refreezing.

As for cleanup, simply throw away the foil and recycle the cardboard when you are done with the candy bar. Outside that, there is no real cleanup needed, unless one is eating them in a hot environment. In that case, it is likely one would need to wash their hands. If these chocolate squares melt into most fabrics, they will stain.

Overall

Because of how expensive Ghirardelli Sea Salt Soiree chocolate bars are, I was honestly expecting a more intriguing blend of salt and chocolate. This was far more nutty than I wanted and as a result, plummeted from the extraordinary into the average range.

For other Ghirardelli chocolate reviews, please check out:
Dark & Raspberry chocolate squares
Milk Chocolate With Peanut Butter Filling
Dark Chocolate with white mint filling

5/10

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© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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