Hu Kitchen Almond Butter & Puffed Quinoa

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on January 13 2014 | Leave A Comment

Hu Kitchen Almond Butter & Puffed Quinoa

Hu Kitchen are a New York based café/restaurant that – according to their website – try to take a “human” approach to healthy eating. Positioning themselves somewhere between “food fascists” (their words, not mine) and commercial “profiteers of the food industry”, they claim to produce healthy “human” food that tastes great too.

Now, call me old fashioned, but their ‘philosophy’ page does have more than a hint of the food ‘fad’ about it and that makes me quite uncomfortable.

The packaging of this bar has me questioning the message somewhat too. It comes in a simple looking, thick brown paper pouch that fits well with the “back to Human” message, but when it comes down to the detail, the important information is missing. There’s no indication of where the cocoa comes from, or to what extent Hu have been involved in the production. Do they make the chocolate from the bean? Do they even produce the bars themselves?

With traceability such a vital human issue in the chocolate world, it’s disappointing to me that this information is missing from the packaging and Hu’s website.

By now of course, most of us know that dark chocolate is naturally healthy. It doesn’t need to be made with special ingredients, it just is. Thankfully, Hu stop short of making specific health claims, which means I can base the rest of this review on flavour alone.

Hu Kitchen Almond Butter & Puffed Quinoa

This is a 30g bar with a soft filling that reminds me of Zotter’s “Hand Scooped” bars. The flavour is good – rich and chocolatey, without being too sweet. The puffed quinoa have a great, light crunch, and the whole thing is really very pleasant.

The unknown 72% dark chocolate is rich and chocolatey, but has no particularly complex flavour notes. But that’s OK, and it works very well with the bar as a whole.

So what we really have here is a simple, tasty, high-end confectionery. It’s something that I would recommend if it weren’t for the over-emphasis on health messaging and the omission of some important detail. I am probably not the target market that Hu are going for with this bar (or any of their food), but I still enjoyed it.

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Comments On This Post

  1. Haha love the second picture!
    It sounds really interesting though. “rich and chocolatey” – sounds amazing!
    I know of some people who Hu would be targeting

  2. Okay, I don’t want to inspire eantig disorders, so is it even worth trying with Caleb and Luke? I think they need it, but I obviously don’t want to cause any problems. I’m fine with not being too rigid or strict with them but will that just make the yeast stronger because we are only “half way” killing it? I guess the question is, how much flexibility can I have with those two before it backfires and makes their situation worse?

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