Cocoa Via is hardly new. It’s so not-new, it’s not worth listing all the Web sites who’ve mentioned it. The basic premise - “chocolate that’s good for you” - never appealed. what’s the point of that? but it showed up at SuperT and was thus easy to buy. anyway, made by Mars/Dove (and the color scheme is very similar to Dove), it brags about its “cocoapro process” (and they even ® it to let you know it’s special). saying it retains flavanols “to help promote healthy circulation”. hmf. take a look at the pic. there is 1. a cardboard box. and inside 2. a cardboard shelf. on which rest the five bars. over them lies 3. a piece of double-layered glued cardboard. MUCH packaging. and what do you actually get, chocolate-wise? 5 wee .71-oz bars. maybe the size of a single twix. a box of 5 costs $5.99. or $1.20 per stick. now, admittedly, this is no noka. but it’s still a helluva lot of $$. as for the flavor - it’s dark choc and not very sweet. but you have to wonder: what exactly ARE “soy sterol esters“?

While most of the blah-blah re: the Glorious Makeover of NorthPark Center has centered on Barney’sBarney’sBarney’s, there’s news that may interest those w/ a culinary bent. Namely, that HERE NOW* is the la-dee-da first-in-TX branch of The Original Soupman, the now-franchiseable chain launched by Seinfeld cameo-ite Al Yeganeh (w/ corporate partner types), paired w/ a FL concept called Crepe Maker (”home of the handheld crepe”). Crepes, OKfinewhatever, but thumbs up to good soups, rare in Dallas. Hope they’ll execute their menu - soups, salads, cold sandwiches, toasted paninis - in a quality manner; nobody seems able to do that in dallas. Their website’s good, the best thing being a pull-down “rules” menu that includes rules for press (e.g., “only some of the questions emailed may be answered”) and rules for customers offered in 11 languages. (Dutch for “Pick the soup you want!”: Kies de soep die u wil!)

8687 N. Central Expwy. 214-363-1950

*thanks to mr & mrs bk!

before posting this, i conducted the usual investigation to see if it really was news (it’s not) and/or what other stuff might be out there. during this exhaustive search, i discovered an A+ blog, Candy for Dinner, w/ an admirably hardcore focus on breaking candy news (much more diligently than i have time for, altho said blog has such a plethora of hershey’s scoops, one wonders about an inside hershey’s connection). anyway C4D had this Hershey’s with Corn Bits bar wks ago; but it’s been foto’d here already and gets points for being weird. the corn bits are tiny, not sweet, and stick around on the teeth for a second or two. it’s clever intellectually, in that it evokes nestles crunch but with a different grain. can’t wait for the barley

Already beloved here for its xlnt “Little Schoolboy” cookies (or as the frenchies would have it, Le Petit Ecolier), cookie maker Lu Biscuits appears to be undergoing some kind of renaissance w/ a whole wave of new prods. Here & now, a pair of sandwich cookies called Lu Cremes in two varieties: a so-so choc-mint and a solidly good ginger-lemon that aptly fits Lu’s description of “spicy zing of ginger and tart-yet-sweet lemon cream filling”. These, as well as Lu’s new Cream Roulee Rolled Wafers, are notable since they represent a more revolutionary direction than its various-tho-satisfying Little Schoolboy spinoffs such as the one made w/ rice-crisp choc a la nestles crunch

what a way to start ‘07: marc, the indian scout of NYCE, scrounged up what is perhaps the quintessential, the penultimate, the emblematic NYCE product: Hershey’s ltd-ed coffee kisses. let us quantify (or is that qualify?): 1. limited edition + 2. coffee. these coffee kisses are the pinnacle in a flurry of elegant, limited-ed flavors intro’d by hershey’s over the holidays (incl. dark-choc/strawberry & dark-choc raspberry). but coffee. the aroma when you open the bag bursts right out: more folger’s than intelligentsia (props to chic coffee guru spinnakr) but still admirably dark & espresso-y, w/ a flavor similar to that Pocket Coffee stuff