It's funny to see how many people started down the path to bittersweet chocolate addiction via a childhood love for Hershey's Special Dark and baking chocolate. It was the same thing for me too! I'm not so keen on the Special Dark anymore because I think they have changed the formula over the years, and made it sweeter and more acidic. Actually, I think most American chocolate has changed that way. However if you do get cravings for the way things used to taste, I think that Junior Mints and Mallomars have been very consistent over the years. Other than that, I stick with the so-called foo-foo chocolates.

What a sad little article. OK, so the snooty, rhapsodic, ramblings of *some* chocolate snobs can make the eyes roll. How is that any different from any other commodity that snobbish elitists latch onto (wine, cars, high thread count sheets). However, it doesn't mean that at the core there is something elitist with taking delight in and enjoying the myraid variety of chocolates that are now on the market.

Like others have said, I've been eating dark chocolate for a long time and I could hardly be described as an elitist. I'm solidly middle class living in the midwest. I'm just a garden variety chocoholic. My dark chocolate fascination began in elementary school in the 1970s when I begged my parents to let me have the Special Dark instead of the regular Hershey's milk chocolate bar. I'm thrilled that so many interesting varieties are now available all over the country, including a number of fair trade options. And, dark chocolate is healthier than other kinds of chocolate. So what's not to like?

I suspect that Oliver doesn't like his pretentious friends. If they'd have been going nuts over sheets, maybe he would have written about that instead.

Salon should be ashamed that they let Broudy’s trash slip through the editorial filter. Let’s be clear--Broudy resents that some people actually care about how their food tastes, where it came from, and whether it was harvested with slave labor. In other words, he mocks them for approaching their food intellectually. As such, Broudy echoes that habitual American hypocrisy of anti-intellectual egalitarianism--in a nation with more ostentatious consumption and a wider income gap than any other industrialized country on the planet, it’s unforgivable snobbery to show the least bit of education or intellectual curiosity. Consider this, Broudy: If more Americans started to think about how their food tasted before they shovelled it into their mouths, maybe we could make a dent in our national obesity rate.

For those of you who still don’t understand why Broudy’s view is such a travesty and why it has no place in Salon, transpose it to a broader political context where it becomes something like, “Why read an elitist publication like Salon when the rest of America is satisfied with USA Today and network news?”

If some people feel like being snobbish about their chocolate, let them. What does it hurt you? I mean, aside from impugning your enjoyment of the occasional Hershey bar.

There's room in the world for all kinds, isn't there? I'll confess that after reading "Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light", I actually started paying attention to what kind of chocolate I was eating, and tried experimenting more with boutique chocolates, as opposed to "candy" (and you know as well as I that there is a difference, no matter how overblown it might become). After a while, I found myself gravitating toward darker, higher-end products, rather than the American mass-market stuff. Does that make me a chocolate snob? I don't use the jargon, and wouldn't know a "tobacco essence" if it bit me on the ass, but I like the taste better.

So sure, have a snicker(s) at the overwrought language and the pretension, if you like. But understand, all the same, that there is a real line of demarcation between "chocolate" and "candy", and that simply understanding and recognizing that divide isn't snobbery...it's food smarts.

Well, Oliver, you're really hitting all the right notes here, linking expensive chocolate to "urban sophisticates", Europe, and finally (hitting the trifecta) Berkeley, California!

Why not just come out and say it? "Expensive chocolate is for blue-state queers who hate America!".

I particularly love how, in your closing paragraph, you associate the good-ole-days of Hershey's with chastity!

Someone, please anyone, tell me this article is just a joke. It is far from April 1, but I really want to laugh about this.

M.

p.s. I want a yellow ribbon for my car to support our

crappy American "chocolate" (I use quotes since there is so

little actual chocolate in it!)

. . . but as the son of an immigrant parent, introduced to the halbbitter in the checkout aisle at the European meat market at an early age, I've always known the difference between American chocolate and the real thing, and the real thing is better. It's only in recent years (perhaps because of the marketing maneuvers described in the article) that I've come to understand why the real thing is better, and I'm glad to know. I'm not necessarily interested in exploring all the most subtle nuances of the real thing, but I'll always choose a proper 60-percent-plus dark chocolate over, say, a chalky Hershey "Special Dark," and a single hazelnut ganache truffle satisfies me more than a whole Snickers bar.

...I want to join you up on that pillory.

Lots of letters here dismissing the article's observations because, apparently, the writer is unable to distinguish between "good" and "bad," between "refined" and "crass." Of COURSE he can taste the difference between an M&M, a Tootsie Roll, and a square of 80% fancy-pants varietal something-or-other from Cote d'Or or whoever. We ALL can taste the difference.

The problem comes in when some of us forget that, for chrissakes, this is just FOOD! We don't need to analyze every nook and cranny of a flavor in order to enjoy it. We don't need to come up with overwrought, florid descriptions of how our candy's flavor compares to that of our wine and cheese in order to freak out and sweat over how yummy it is.

I got to eat a couple of treats at Jacques Torres' place in Brooklyn the other night for the first time. The stuff was amazing. Did I spend my eating time wishing wistfully that I knew the pseudo-technical jargon to describe the experience? Heck no. I just ate it, loved it, and promised myself that I'd return for more. You know what? The Cadbury treat I snarfed the next day was really tasty, too.

I know the difference between the two. It's immediately apprent. I have better things to do with my time, though, than to spend it falsely inflating my ego by prattling on about it.