Fardoulis Chocolates
As luck would have it, our lovely neighbours Jill and Andrew invited us over to their house for pre-Christmas nibbles and drinks.
Conversations ranged from how weird the uninvited neighbours were, to what jobs we all had, to chocolate. Jill’s step-daughter is a Sydney-based food distributor of all things truly essential to happy living such as wonderful café-style cookies and chocolate – Fardoulis, to be precise. Fardoulis chocolates are made in Kogarah, New South Wales (not just the birthplace of Clive James) and feature high quality ingredients. No compounded oily stuff here.
And then things started to really feel like Christmas: Jill brought out a 5 kilogram box full of Fardoulis shell-shaped truffles. What a wonderful way to end a year for this Chocablog writer!
The rum truffle was a perfect combination with the rum cutting through the sweetness of the milk chocolate and lingering afterwards. To follow this with one of Fardoulis’ cappuccino truffles was a divine experience. Again, the genuine taste of the coffee was the ideal partner to the milk chocolate. Even better was that it was a warmish South Australian day, so the chocolates were soft and incredibly flavoursome.
Andrew then threw me a ‘Melon Illusion’ which ramped things up several notches. Despite sounding rather incongruous – milk chocolate with midori melon-flavoured truffle inside, it was a triumph. It had a floral, perfumy taste that wasn’t over-powering but left me (and the others at the table) wanting more. Which of course we did.
What was also nice to discover was their price per kilogram is significantly cheaper than Lindt and the (in my opinion) way over-valued Ferrero Rochers. At the time of printing, Fardoulis chocolates have yet to break into South Australia but I sure hope they do. I wish Jill the very best in her marketing methods and will most certainly be willing to hand over my hard-earned for any of their truffles. Besides, I’ve yet to try their mint, orange & macadamia, strawberry & macadamia, hazelnut praline, rum & hazelnut, baileys, cognac & hazelnut, strawberry champagne, cosmopolitan cocktail, honey & macadamia, ginger & macadamia, B52 cocktail and cherry cream flavours!