When we were flying to Austin for Thanksgiving last year, we noticed that there was a Vosges chocolate shop at O'Hare. We stopped in and picked up some gifts for Fuzzy's mom, and a new chocolate bar that we had never seen before, the Black Salt Caramel bar. We've been a fan of Vosges for a while, I love salty sweet things, Fuzzy loves caramel, and I can really only eat dark chocolate these days (milk is too sweet for me), so it looked like the perfect bar for the two of us. It was. We became obsessed with it, and for a while this year, I was buying them by the handful because I couldn't get enough of them. But at $7 a pop, that can start to add up.
At the end of July, it was our five-year wedding anniversary. We stayed at a shi shi hotel downtown that had a full bar and a bottle of wine in our hotel room. The bottle of wine was $60, but the hotel was right across the street from a Trader Joe's. We popped over for some cheap champagne and stopped to look at the chocolate offerings. We saw a sign for a dark chocolate caramel salt bar, but didn't see the bar anywhere. A women popped in next to us and said "yeah, they never have them, cause they are so good." and walked away. Just then, we noticed a stash of them on a different shelf, and so we grabbed two to take back to the hotel. The price? Only $2.
And so, we had to do a side by side comparison.
At a glance, they look about the same, only you can see the salt crystals on the outside of the Trader Joe's bar. Both bars are hard to break on the indentations, and if left open sideways will leak the caramel from the rest of the bar into the package (not to worry! It is easy to lick off the package.)
We both agree that the flavor of the Trader Joe's bar is a little more intense. It is saltier than the Vosges bar, and the chocolate is more bitter and the caramel a little sweeter. The Vosges bar is more refined--the flavors blend together a little more and it is a more subtle taste.
Fuzzy's Pick: Trader Joe's!
Erica's Pick: Vosges!
