Baratti e Milano Extra Fondente

September 27, 2011April 12, 2012 Lee McCoy 1 Comment

I’ve come to the conclusion that any bar of chocolate that comes in packaged in a golden box can only be pretentious – in that it tries hard to be something that it never will. And that leads me to this bar of Baratti e Milano Extra Fondente which I think I picked up in Portugal and have only just got around to leaving it. But after reviewing it, I wish I’d left it behind.

This only going to be a quick review as I really don’t like it. It tries to be a bitter chocolate and it succeeds in doing so, but that bitterness is so “thin” and artificial tasting that really is unpleasant against a similarly unpleasant artificial sweetness. In fact, it reminds me of the Canderel Dark Chocolate which I also got from Portugal, and was also pretty damn inedible.

I really do hope that Baratti e Milano aren’t fine, artisan Italian chocolatiers that I’ve never heard of before. But looking at their website, they don’t seem to know what they are, other than a Patisserie, a coffee bar, a restaurant, an ice cream maker or a bar – no mention of being chocolatiers, let alone great Italian chocolate makers.

How do I rate this bar? Well not all that well. It’s more edible than the Canderel, but still only deserves a 25% – and that’s being generous seeing as it was a touch out of date.

Moyan Brenn

Lee, i’m still laughing in reading your review…this is exactely what i though when i bought this chocolate bar here in Italy….i come from this country and i perfectly know the list of those brands using special golden box to aesthetically improve a product which in terms of quality is poor…. i work in the heart of Rome, and i am a lover of brands such Amedei, Michel Cluizel and Domori which can be easily found here ( especially the first 2). But that damned day, the only brand sold by the cafe’ near my workplace was Baratti and Milano and i didn’t have the time to reach my favourite choco shop to buy another Domori bar… my heart told me “don’t do it! you perfectly know it’s going to be a bad experience!”, but i didn’t resist….conclusion, after less than half bar i trashed it and i just kept the golden box to write a review on my blog like you did…conclusion…as you said it’s the typical italian bar, filled with silver and golden logos just to let you hope more than what you should..having found your review here, now i know i’m not the only one to have tried the “Baratti experience”….. just a thing more, in my case it has been even worst….my bar wasn’t the standard dark but the one called “the great CRU of Cocoa, Ghana”…… they promise you to give you the best from Ghana….forgetting for a moment that Ghana is widest bulk cocoa producer togheter with Ivory Coast, the result, despite this prejudice and the use of the word CRU on the box, was the same…….i don’t want to accuse Baratti and Milano to sell bulk cocoa, but just to make abuse of well known terms and make use of eccentric boxes to deceive people…….