Review: KIND Nuts & Spices Dark Chocolate Mocha Almond Bar

Today's review subject presented me with quite a dilemma.  First of all, I'm not the biggest fan of dark chocolate.  That doesn't mean that I hate it, but out of all the types of chocolate, dark chocolate is my least favorite.  Secondly, my feelings about mocha are mixed.  I very much like coffee and drink it most mornings, but coffee-flavored food products are not high on my list of desirable things.  That said, I was willing to give another KIND product a shot, despite my reservations, when I picked up this KIND Nuts & Spices Dark Chocolate Mocha Almond Bar at Kroger for $1.25.  It's 1.4 ounces and has 200 calories and six grams of protein.  As with most, if not all, KIND products, it's all natural, gluten free, etc.

I love the description of this from KIND's website and since I'm mostly lazy, I'll just copy and paste that description here: "Dark Roast coffee and whole almonds blended with honey and drizzled in dark chocolate to form a bar that, with just 5g of sugar, only tastes indulgent."  I will point out that while I knew this was coffee based, I didn't know it was dark roast coffee.  Uh-oh...I'm not a fan of dark roasts coffees and prefer a lighter blend.  Since this is visually out there for all to see (check out those huge almonds!), the only real observation that I can provide that the picture can't is this did have a strong coffee/mocha smell straight out of the wrapper.

The smell was no different than the taste as I immediately tasted dark roast coffee when I bit into this and honestly, I was not a fan.  Not because it was awful, but because of personal preferences.  As for the rest of the bar, the dark chocolate was really only there for its dense, melting qualities and mouthfeel since the flavor of the dark roast coffee mocha kind of overpowered everything else.  It was a similar situation for the almonds as they brought spectacular crunch to this, but since almonds are a weak-flavored nut to begin with, it should come as no surprise that they were overpowered by the coffee flavoring as well.  This bar also had honey in it and while the honey was not individually discernible, there was a very, very faint hint of sugary sweetness in here and I don't think it's a reach to say that came as a results of the honey.  For the total package, this was a coffee (dark) flavored bar that had a ton of crunch.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This is one of the kinds of reviews that present me with a dilemma because my personal preferences are not necessarily an indicator of the true worthiness of the product.  I've already said that I don't particularly like dark chocolate or dark roast coffee, so for me, this is a FLY BY IT type of product.  Now, if you like one or both of those things, your opinion may be entirely different.  So, instead of looking at my final determination (if you ever do anyway), I would instead focus on the description of the flavor as your reaction to that is what will determine if you personally think this is a good bar or not.  On another note, I'm not quite sure why this is part of the Nuts & Spices line of bars because I'm not sure where the spices part of that falls in with this bar.  Odd.

FLY BY IT!!