Doctor Indulgence Mini Emergency Bars

To me, nothing says “expensive gimmick” quite like chocolate bought from John Lewis. The Brent Cross store where I purchased this has a small but constantly changing chocolate gift section that’s crammed with shiny packages containing overpriced confections of questionable quality.

This little plastic box, for instance, contains 210g of chocolate and set me back a whopping £7.

But of course you’re not meant to buy these for yourself, they’re meant to be a gift. Hence the label that looks (vaguely) like a prescription and the large cross embossed onto the chocolate itself.

So a nice concept, but unfortunately the chocolate isn’t that great. It’s 53.5% cocoa solids and contains milk powder, but doesn’t describe itself as either milk chocolate or dark chocolate. In fact, there isn’t a huge amount of information on the box at all. There’s a link to a web site which features a range of similar, but slightly different products, but no mention of this particular box that I can find.

The taste is somewhat akin to Cadbury Bournville. It’s not particularly bad, but it’s way too sweet for me. I think if they removed about half the sugar, I would have quite enjoyed this, but as it was I couldn’t manage more than one of the 7 bars.

So definitely a gimmick – and a horribly overpriced one too. If you’re looking to buy a chocolate gift, do yourself a favour and go for a simple, quality bar of chocolate instead.

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