When I talk about chocolate bars with many added ingredients like caramel, rice crisps or nuts, I always talk about balance of flavours. The problem is that most bars with a lot of added ingredients can’t seem to balance the flavour of the chocolate and all of the other ingredients they’re adding to the chocolate. It could either be that the chocolate dominates and you can’t taste any of the ingredients. It could also be that there’s not enough chocolate and the ingredients dominate. On some occasions it’s also possible that the ingredients clash with each other and you lose some of the featured flavours. It’s not easy to make a bar that’s full of fun ingredients, but still has balance. This bar on the other hand seems to have done something that I didn’t think possible, but it’s a good thing.

The chocolate in this bar is very well represented, and so are all the fun added ingredients. The difference here is that the added ingredients are not subtle in any way. The salt is salty, the nougat tasty, and the pretzel both salty and crunchy. Every single added ingredient in this bar (and there are many) are super bold and powerful, yet they’re also balanced among each other and with the chocolate. Each bite is a powerful blast of each ingredient, and it’s all smoothed out beautifully with the chocolate.

Someone took great care in measuring out the ingredients in this bar. I would say that all of the ingredients aren’t really anything revolutionary in a chocolate bar, but the balance of flavour and texture is perfect. I’ve had pretty good luck with Tony’s Chocolonely in the past, and this bar is only adding to its fine reputation.