I found a new candy store and they have everything! (I can’t remember who suggested this, but I thank you most wholeheartedly!) Mel & Rose, which is on Melrose Blvd near La Cienega (just north of the Beverly Center).

Well, maybe they don’t have everything, but a lot of the things I’ve been looking for and a good assortment of things I didn’t even know existed. They didn’t have KitKat bars from around the world, but they had Kinder Eggs.

Mel & Rose is a liquor store, wine store (in a separate space) and deli with a large selection of fine chocolate bars. They also have a huge selection of imported consumer candies, such UK imports like Flake, Cadbury, Aeros and Bassett’s. There are German candies like Ritter and a whole line of Haribo bagged treats. Australian brands like Cherry Mash, Life Savers and Aussie licorice.

If you’re into high-end chocolate bars, I think that’s probably what they do best.  Vosges, New Tree, Michael Cluizel, Dolfin, Cafe-Tasse, MarieBelle, Cote d’Or, Hachez, Dagoba, Green & Black’s, Americi, Santander, Divine, Galler, Chocovic, Chocolat Bonnat, El Rey and Guittard. (The only chocolate I thought was missing was Scharffen Berger.)

The prices aren’t rock bottom, but they’re on par with places on the web like Chocosphere when you factor shipping and you get to read the labels and sniff them before you buy.

Check out this Flickr set of photos that I took in the store ... until the fellow behind the counter told me there were no cameras allowed in the store.

Mel & Rose
8344 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Telephone: 323-655-5557

I picked up a couple of other exciting things that I’ll be posting about soon.

After my rave review of Green & Black’s White Chocolate (which surprised even me) I got an email from a representative of Green & Black’s asking if I’d tried their Ginger bar. They were reading the blog and knew how much I loved ginger! Of course when I said I hadn’t seen it in the store yet (Target has a rather limited selection), she offered to send me some. (And some other bars which I’ll review in the coming weeks.)

It’s a beautiful bar, with the same simple foil wrapping cloaked in a paper wrapper. The bar was shiny with small sections that gave a good snap. It smelled distinctly smoky and earthy. The dark chocolate is 60% cocoa content.

The first flavors I noticed when letting the chocolate melt on my tongue were a rather tart lemon and then a lingering burn of black pepper. Later the rooty, earthen flavors emerged, giving the bar more of a ginger flavor than a chocolate one.

The crystallization of the ginger gives the bar a more distinct graininess. It’s also rather sweet. I liked the spicy burn, and I found it very munchable, but the acidity kind of bothered me after a while. (But I have been eating a lot of pineapple lately and may be working with a disadvantaged tongue.)

The integration of the two flavors and textures isn’t quite right for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s tasty, but I really wanted more essence of ginger and less graininess and of course more of the creaminess and flavors of the chocolate. I do like how generous they are with the ginger, much better than the ratios in the Dagoba chocolate bars I’ve had (their Chai bar has scant ginger content). I still favor the panned ginger chocolate pieces that I’ve been getting at Trader Joe’s, but if you don’t have access to those, this would be a good fallback treat.

I have a few more bars that they sent me to try, so I’ll be adding those to the site within the next couple of weeks. On my list is their Caramel, 70% Dark, Hazelnut & Currant and Espresso.

I’ve been looking for this kooky little novelty chocolate item for a while. Kinder is a widely distributed confection brand that also makes the intensely addictive Kinder Bueno (which is a must-try for any hazelnut lover).

I found a new candy source in Los Angeles (posting tomorrow about that) called Mel & Rose’s on Melrose Avenue. They have EVERYTHING that you might want from Europe or Australia. It’s not a big shop, but they had an excellent selection and decent prices. In fact, my little Kinder Eggs were less than a dollar each. I was led to believe that these were not permitted to be sold in the US because of the “choking hazard” of the toy surprise inside, but after opening one, I’d have to wonder what child could (or would want to) eat that toy-filled capsule.

Think of these as those toy eggs that you get in the gumball machines at the mega-marts. Except instead of being a plastic egg, it’s a chocolate egg.

The egg is pretty much the size of a regular chicken egg. Inside the white and red foil it’s a rather lack-luster milk chocolate with a distinct seam. I wasn’t quite sure if there was a way to open it, so I just pressed my finger into the top and sort of tore it open. On my second egg I found that if you sqeeze about halfway along the seam the whole thing pops apart rather neatly.

Inside the egg it’s “white chocolate” (I say in quotes because it says on the label that it’s actually a “milky white lining” which doesn’t even sound edible). It smells sweet and rather like powdered milk. Inside the egg is a yellow plastic capsule that contains the Kinder Suprise (kinder means children in German and is pronounced with a short i). The chocolate is passably edible, nothing I’d want to buy by itself.

The yellow capsule holds a little plastic toy (usually one you have to put together). I’m not really sure what the one is in the picture. It’s a little baby in a crow’s nest with a crab crawling up the mast ... I think. There’s a little wheel on the bottom of it and if you roll it around it wiggles the mast and crow’s nest. The second prize (in the other egg) was a little metronome on a wheel with a funny little anthropomorphic musical note riding on it.

As a candy/toy, I find these much more compelling than Pez. I have poked around and have seen that some prizes can be rather sophisticated and you can collect theme prizes. (See other prizes in this flicker kinder pool.)

If you’re traveling someplace where you can pick these up, they’re usually pretty cheap (about 50 cents) and make great little stocking stuffers or gifts. It’s too bad they can’t sell them in the States.

Kinder is part of the Ferrero family of companies/brands. They also make the Ferrero Rocher, Bueno, Mon Cheri, Nutella & Pocket Coffee, among other things.

If you’ve had Kinder Eggs before, what sort of prizes did you get in yours?

It seems like some parts of the country are known for different confections. The South does wonderful things with pecan pralines, San Francisco has a wonderful way with dark chocolate, the Jersey Shore has its salt water taffy. Now I’m noticing that Colorado is attracted to toffee. My neighbor got this as a gift at the office from a co-worker returning from Colorado. It’s, apparently, the thing that people bring back from Colorado.

These thick slabs of almond toffee are described thusly on their website:

Sweet cream butter from select Midwest dairies, pure cane sugar from the Hawaiian Islands and paper shell almonds from the finest California groves. A generous layer of rich milk chocolate from the renowned Guittard family and a final sprinkling of crushed almonds complete this world renowned treat.

Instead of pieces of almonds dotting the toffee, this toffee has generous whole almonds. The slabs are extra thick and the chocolate coats both sides with an extra dusting of powdered almonds. The toffee has a crisp bite with a strong buttery taste to it. It cleaves well and melts on the tongue with a good salty bite and caramelized sugar flavor.

I can see why Enstrom’s is so highly regarded. This is tasty toffee. The only thing that bugs me about is the whole slab idea. I’d prefer my toffee to be in regular pieces that I can pick up and bite or pop in my mouth whole. But if that’s my biggest complaint, well, I don’t have much to complain about. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t go wrong with any of the toffees I’ve had from Colorado (see Silver Bear).

While working on the Frequently Asked Questions, one subject has come up that I thought might demand its own post. How did I start writing about candy?

That question assumes that there was a time that I didn’t write about candy.

To illustrate this, I present a short story I wrote at the age of 10. As embarrassing as it is to reveal my earlier works, it is kinda funny that the only fiction I can find from my grade school days has candy as a main subject.

There’s not much text, so I retyped it as the caption for the page images. Click here to see the story.