Review: CLIF Mojo Dark Chocolate Cherry Almond Trail Mix Bar

The invasion of new CLIF reviews from the Mojo product line continues today!  Yippee!  Today's review comes from the same shopping splurge as the prior reviews as I was able to pick up this CLIF Mojo Dark Chocolate Cherry Almond Trail Mix Bar on sale at Kroger for $1.00, just like the others.  This gluten free and somewhat organic bar clocks in at 1.41 ounces with 180 calories and for grams of protein.  It's got that dark chocolate thing going for it too, so if you are looking for antioxidants, this presents itself as an option.

Like I've mentioned before, these Mojo bars lay it out there for the entire world to see with the fact that they come in clear packaging as well as lack any sort of all-encompassing coating that hides the interior of the bar.  This one is a little different though in that it does have some coating on the bottom of the bar in the form of dark chocolate.  What was interesting about that dark chocolate was that it did not have the flat (and in my opinion, foul) smell of dark chocolate.  Instead, that dark chocolate smell seemed like it was almost sweet, but that may have been the dried cherries that are in the bar mix that were deceiving me a bit.  Also within this bar are a plethora of huge almonds and some lard dark chocolate chunks.  The rest of the bar was the typical soy crisp with a hint of a salty smell.

As I took a bite of this bar, I kind of knew what to expect from a texture perspective since I've had these Mojo trail mix bars before.  The actual soy crisp was airy and chewy and then the huge almonds brought big time pop each time I encountered one as I was chewing.  In addition to that the dried cherries provided some chewiness to the equation.  As for the dark chocolate, the chunks brought a bit of additional crunch and then dissipated to be more of a coating, much like the actual coating base layer itself.  All in all, it was chewy, crunchy and somewhat gooey because of the chocolate.  Kind of fun from a mouthfeel perspective.  As for the taste, it wasn't too shabby either.  The cherries helped the dark chocolate along and really made the flavor pretty tame with a hint of sweetness and tang at the end of each bite.  The almonds really had no flavor, but there was an interesting little bite from sea salt at the end of each bite after I chewed it for a bit.  It was enough of a bite that it actually made me kind of thirsty and I wasn't quite expecting that.  That saltiness also tamed the cherry flavor a bit, so this really was somewhat of a textbook combination of sweet and salty.

Buy It or Fly By It?  I'm not the world's biggest fan of the sweet and salty combination and while I wish that the salty component had not been included here, I'm not going to say that it ruined the bar for me.  It was still tasty enough that I'll give this a BUY IT rating because the flavors and textures more than made up for the unwanted salty component of this bar.

BUY IT!!