Cacao Sampaka

Cacao Sampaka is a new brand of chocolate, and it's the last word in chocolate luxury. Perhaps you think we have enough luxury chocolate brands already. However, once you’ve let a square of Cacao Sampaka melt on your tongue, releasing its dark and fruity flavours, you’ll see what all the fuss is about.

Albert Adrià, one of the world’s top chefs, and former pastry chef of El Bulli, is the brain behind the brand. Frankly, this is a situation so wonderful that even the most dedicated chocoholic could not have dreamed it up. Yet here it is, one of the world’s best chefs, making one of the world’s favourite things to eat. You won’t be surprised to hear that the results are to die for.

There is certainly a science to the way Cacao Samapaka works. Take a bite of one of their blackberry dark chocolate bars, and initially you are hit by chocolate that means business. It’s dark, it’s the perfect texture, it’s probably the best chocolate you ever had. But then, all of a sudden, there’s something else! Blackberry flavours start wrestling through, upstaging the chocolate, a truly bizarre sensation. It tastes like blackberries, but it behaves like chocolate -  a mouth-boggling experience.

If you’re a traditional sort of chocolate lover you’ll love Cacao Sampaka. Their chocolate bars are so elegantly packaged and presented that it seems too plebeian to refer to them as chocolate bars. There are really more like chocolate ingots. If you’re a more quirky sort of chocoholic, with a taste for eccentric sweet and savoury combinations, you’ll love Cacao Sampaka even more. As you’ll have gathered, their blackberry dark chocolate is a wonder, and there’s so much more where that came from. The Jamaican pepper milk chocolate will lull you into a false sense of security, and then subtly diffuse its peppery potency over your confused tongue. The olive oil flavoured dark chocolate has the most extraordinary texture and is almost entirely savoury.

If Willy Wonka had made chocolate for adults it would have been like this. Cacao Sampaka comes at a price, but it’s a price you’ll be all too happy to pay once you’ve given it a go. For more information, or to buy online, visit the Cacao Sampaka webite. Cacao Sampaka shops will be opening up in London over the next few months, in Canary Wharf and Covent Garden.

**Reviewed by:** Emily Boyd