Not The Ambassador's Choice (Ferrero Rondnoir)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Ferrero Rondnoir
Date:	18/06/09 (108 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The truffle in the middle is not bad

Disadvantages: Very bitter and so messy to eat

I don't like Ferrero Rocher (and therefore always buy them for my family, not because I'm mean but because it's a guaranteed gift I won't then help myself to) but I do like Nutella, which is also made by them, so I keep an open mind when it comes to new products bearing the Ferrero name. I had been seeing these everywhere for months, but only in large boxes which I couldn't justify buying merely to satisfy my curiosity. Recently, however, I found them on sale in small tube boxes, and decided for 35 pesos, or £1.75, I could finally try them.

Rondnoir chocolates look a bit like the Rocher ones, in that they are small balls, individually wrapped and each seated in a mini paper case. I checked the description before buying and found "a dark chocolate cream surrounding a dark pearl within a delicate crisp wafer topped with dark chocolate morsels". I don't dislike dark chocolate, though I prefer milk, but I did at least know what I was letting myself in for. What I was looking for in the description was what I received: a promise of no crunchy nuts, since they're the part that puts me off Ferrero Rocher (though ironically the smooth hazelnutty taste is what attracts me to Nutella).

The box I had was a tall tube that stacked the 4 chocolates one on top of the other. It was seal wrapped with plastic over the cardboard tube, and so tight it was hard to get in - I tried nails, scissors and, eventually, teeth just to crack the plastic. I don't generally like to work this hard for my chocolate, though I suppose frustration must have burnt a few calories. On the flip side, the crinkly plastic and the cardboard box and the little paper 'skirts' and the paper covers give you lots of stuff to play with afterwards, if you're the sort of person whose fingers always like to model random animals and aliens and suchlike with any materials right in front of you. I made a pig, but then I did have Swine Flu on the brain. They're still not a patch on those brilliant clear plastic boxes the originals come in though - I used to keep pencil sharpenings in mine in Year 5 when keeping a box full of pencil sharpenings seemed the cool thing to do.

Once unwrapped, the chocolates don't look all that attractive. They are small balls but the vermicelli coating is far from even as in the picture on box, and it starts to flake off even as you unwrap the foil, making them not one you'd want to eat on a white sofa or near a computer. Added to their messiness is the fact that, unless you have a massive gob, they're simply too big to eat in one go, so you have to bite into them. When I did this, I ended up biting off the shell, since this splintered from the central core with little effort. You can see why they sell them in fancy wrappers because if you served these up to guests without the paper case, they'd be pretty underwhelmed by what looks like a rather hand-made product, with no two sporting exactly the same look.

Inside the chocolates I found the rather bitter chocolate cream. When I do eat dark chocolate, I like the top quality stuff, like Lindt or Green and Blacks, that has all sorts of subtle flavours to it, but this had nothing and was just plain and bitter. The wafer was crisp, but like most wafers has little in the way of flavour. If you imagine that it probably takes a little bit of the bitterness away, I wouldn't want to know what these would taste like without said wafer part. The chocolate pearl centre they rave about is what I would simply call a smooth truffle. Though this is dark chocolate too, I found it less bitter than its coating, though it had a funny after taste.

Overall, I was not impressed by these, and think that even massive fans of dark chocolate might not find them wonderful. The messiness put me off immediately, and unfortunately they did not redeem themselves in terms of taste. I found them so bitter, 3 was my limit. Unfortunately, here they come in tubes of 4 (which weight 40g, not an excessive amount in terms of chocolate). They might be nice to serve individually with coffee like a petit four, but to sit and eat them several at a time as if they were an ordinary bar or box of chocolates is not something I would recommend.

These were launched in the UK for Christmas 2008. They are available all over, and you can expect to pay about £2 or up in the UK.


For an appetising picture of what they should look like, see:
www.ferrerochocolatesusa.com/

Summary: Never again