Review: Mariani Granola Honeybar

Mariani has had a nice little introduction on the blog as they've successfully pleased me after their shocking (to me) introduction to me when I just happened upon them at my local Walmart Neighborhood Market.  In that "shocking" introduction, I picked up four different flavors and this is the third of those four flavors as I grabbed this very basic sounding Mariani Granola Honeybar for the same $1.29 as the others.  The bar itself is 1.4 ounces and has 160 calories and a fairly minimal four grams of protein.  It's also free of a lot of things as well, including cholesterol, gluten and wheat.  In addition to that, it's also all natural, kosher and vegetarian.  Whew!  That's a lot of stuff.

I think the tag on the label of "Pure & Simple" does an excellent job of describing this.  As the product description on their website basically says, this is just a minimal amount of natural ingredients that are bound together by honey, which is quite sticky actually.  Those limited ingredients include almonds, crisp brown rice, oats, peanuts and raisins.  Nearly all of those are fairly large and visible to the naked eye, especially the raisins.  The bar smelled strongly of raisins and peanuts, so not only were those ingredients visibly large, but they were also prevalent in the aroma of this bar too.

Biting into this, I can't say that I was particularly surprised by the flavor.  It had mixes of sweet honey, tangy/sweet raisin and nuttiness from the almonds and peanuts.  The peanuts took the focal point of the nut flavor, which is what I would have expected.  The only real surprise I had in this was that it was more crunchy and difficult to chew than I would have expected.  I expected something similar to a Quaker Chewy bar in that it would be soft and easy to get through, but this was mostly crunchy and kind of an effort to get through.  The oat/rice/raisin mix was soft and chewy, but that's about it in terms of the soft parts of this bar.

Buy It or Fly By It?  I was questioning whether I wanted to give this bar the time of day (or taste it) because of how basic it was, but I was glad I did because it was yummy.  Basic qualities aside, this flavor earns this a BUY IT rating and definitely makes it worth picking up if you find it in one of your local stores.  Well done, Mariani.  You've got another winner!

BUY IT!!