If you live on the West Coast, See’s is no big deal. (Note redundancy of yesterday’s lede & today’s.) But branches of this Cali-spawned chocotier are rare in TX (altho Rice Epicurean in Houston has ‘em). Wanna read some mktg spiel? See’s Famous Old Time Candies® was founded in LA in 1921 by Charles See. The sparkling clean, B&W shop was designed to resemble his mother Mary See’s home kitchen. The co. is HQ’d in SF w/ a 2nd kitchen in LA, delivering fresh chocs & candies to over 200 See’s shops in the West. Anyhoo, every Xmas, we get See’s seasonal stores. This year, it started 11-10 and runs thru 12-24 at these area malls: VALLEY VIEW CENTER, RIDGMAR in FW, STONEBRIAR in Frisco, NORTH EAST MALL in Hurst, THE PARKS AT ARLINGTON, and COLLIN CREEK MALL in Plano, mere minutes from NYCE

If you live in the NE, spumoni ice cream is like no big deal. But the multi-flavored Ital-American froz confection is rare in the south (where the culinaires prefer crap like chess pie) and so it’s news to find a store brand - specifically Safeway Select Spumoni - show up at the ol’ smkt. Like peppymint & eggnog, it’s viewed as a holiday flavor, and that’s why it’s showing up now w/ the clock ticking on its lifespan. And while it’s nice to have it, locals can be glad that Central Market sells pints of the far superior Stucchi’s spumoni, year-round.

Hey hey, for all those corporate-phobes out there, gather round this new independently-owned coffee place: Drip Coffee Company. Altho i feel obliged to point out that, like SO many of these “independent” heroes, Drip’s (very cool) founder Steve Thatcher studied coffee w/ you-know-who. In fact, he moved to Seattle back in the ’90s to work for them and learn the ropes. He opened his first indie coffee place in Amarillo, when he was a mere 22; he’s also done coffee in Austin & Boston. He came to Dallas for a girl — and we get another coffee spot in the bargain. Drip is in the old Avon Cleaners bldg, where he’ll be roasting about 10 varieties of coffee, along w/ fine teas from Octavia and pastries from Doughmonkey.

4343 Lovers Lane. 214-599-7800. Opening 1st wk of December

This is what you’d call a throwaway (note impromptu staging of photo), but it’s the day B4 the holiday & we got, yknow, shit to do. A marginally-interesting seasonal pumpkin product thus seems just the ticket. NYCE has previously explored the way every food category seems to be getting its pumpkin on but yogurt’s a new one, specifically Lucerne pumpkin-pie flavored yogurt. It wasn’t bad, really; a little mouth-puckeringly strange but in a way that made you want to finish it. But the lame thing izzat the ingreds are nothing more than yogurt w/ pumpkin-pie filling stirred in. i mean jeez how simple can you get

Assuming the topic were Jamba Juice (and it is), the obvious peg would be the Holiday Smoothies: Mighty Cherry Charger (”festive refreshment of succulent cherries, strawberries, & raspberry juice blah blah blah”) & Orange Cherry Cheer (cherry+orange, you get the pic). But JJ also has these “functional” smoothies w/ megadoses of protein, Vit C, etc. There’s Coldbuster! and Acai Supercharger, w/ acai, a trendy, purply superfood which has beaucoup antioxidants. Plus ooky-colored green tea smoothies: Matcha Momentum & Matcha Green Tea Blast, w/ 75 mgs of caffeine. Green-tea caffeine = slow build to a low, mildly teeth-gnashing buzz. If you like that kind of thing, they even have green tea shots, sorta like espresso but green

* no photo = slacker jamba publicist no return emails yet

Maybe you’ve heard mint is big very big this holiday season. Maybe you’ve seen the mint M&Ms. Maybe you’ve seen the trio of minis in white, milk, & dark mint choc or the nuggets, But have you seen the limited edition York choc truffle mint patties? W/ a choc ctr instedda white, see. Choc ctr = truffle, see. they’re also not quite as harshly minty as the regular Yorks. FYI, unless something revolutionary comes along, this’ll be the last minty/holiday item for NYCE. Really. I mean it. No seriously.

Let’s see, little choc bits w/ a colorful candy coating. M&Ms, right? Oh but these are shaped like a chocolate chip (tho Hershey would have you say that they’re shaped “like a kiss” xcept there is no such shape). Anyway there you have it, the “new” Kissables, which hershey’s hopes will expand the Kiss audience beyond smkts and into convenience stores. Cuz, what w/ the Hershey bars & reese’s cups & so on, there aren’t enough hershey’s consumers at conv stores already. Ouch, look out, data: Only 3% of Hershey’s Kisses are sold at conv stores, compared w/ 35% for Reese’s and 20% for Hershey’s bars.

Ice cream cos. are in the throes of releasing their holiday flavors – most commonly peppmint, pumpkin, & eggnog – but Dreyer’s has one that’s sorta novel: Gingerbread Man, cinnamon ice cream w/ brown sugar swirl & ginger cookie pieces. Too bad Dreyer’s ice cream is so bleh. This flavor has been out a couplo yrs but wasn’t as widespread as the others. Speaking of not widespread, Starbucks has a new MAPLE Latte but heavens to murgatroid, it’s only available in new England and Canada

No fun links again today but here it is: Coke announced last wk that it’ll intro Black Cherry Vanilla Coke in January. Which, whatever, but check out the line of b.s. here: “Cherry-flavored beverages are experiencing significant growth,” acc/to the Cokesperson statement, who goes on to call the combo of cola + black cherry + vanilla “innovative”. Innovative. Is it possible – and this seems hard to believe, Coke being such a big corp w/ an undoubtedly well-staffed mktg dept* – they’ve never heard of Dr Pepper cherry vanilla? For that matter, howdya suppose sibling drink black cherry citrus fresca feels? Meanwhile, in the unlikely event that U R wondering how this’ll affect other “innovative” products in the coke line: cherry coke stays but vanilla coke is history.

*give them credit for this: they’ve got jpegs of the new prod ready for download

Have had these Hershey’s ‘n’ more bars “on hand” as an emergency backup blog item for wks now. Long before they were even posted on Hershey’s site. Which is not so uncommon, for Hershey’s to observe some kind of crack-addled timetable vis a vis product release & product announcement. (Starbucks does the same thing, which it sez is to prevent people from becoming rabid w/ desire and infuriated when it’s not available.) (There are many great linkable items in that last sentence - rabid, infuriated, etc - but today, alas, is link-free.) Anyway Hershey’s is beginning to drown itself w/ special editions, so much so that they ain’t special anymore. But this ‘n’ more bar is really GOOD, with A+ proportion of cookie, choc, and goo (3 kinds, fudge, marshmallow, & caramel). Very Twixy.

Can anyone guess what those candy bars are hanging from?