Oliver, it's not nice to call people names, even if you think you've got their motivations pegged. There are more reasons than bourgeois snobbery to eat the occasional fine chocolate.

For starters, the small-label organic stuff does not, as a rule, rely on slave labour. A lot of mass market chocolate-based sweets are manufactured with cheap beans from the Ivory Coast or elsewhere in West Africa, where children are routinely kidnapped or bought and forced to pick beans. The Fair Trade symbol lets you have pleasure without guilt, and it's worth the extra money.

Also, because really good dark chocolate is intensely satisfying, you are good and sated after a square or two (well, I am, anyhow - I was eating 85% before it was popular, dammit) Much better for the waistline. And at the risk of seeming frightfully, terribly, irredeemably snobby, good dark chocolate is a perfect match for that other delicious vice; a big cold climate red.

People enjoy things for different reasons - if someone wants to tell you about mouth feel and terroir, it's just possible they think you are interested and want to know, or that the information will somehow enhance your experience.

Does it have to be labeled "snobbery," when you simply learn to tell one flavor from the next? In so many other cultures, people of all classes know the difference between mass produced gut rot and a carefully produced wine, or between corporate chocolate, which is mostly chemicals and milk powder, and chocolate that is produced by artisans who care about what they create. IF the author is tired of what he calls snobbery, I'm tired of the old puritanical schitck that makes sensual knowledge into a crime or some form of elitism. But any self respecting small farmer (read dirt farmer, peasant) from Mexico, France, Italy, Spain, Africa, and a host of other places outside the uniform mall shaped culture, can tell the difference between the bland and boring pablum made for mass consumption and real food, be it wine, chocolate or tomatoes. The refinement and education of the sense is not unrelated to the ability to think clearly and independently. As for Godiva, the author has it right. A few pieces are okay but mostly it has become the same old fakery we find everywhere in Supermarkets today. Are Anericans starting to tel the difference? Good! Maybe next we can start to tell the difference between lies and truth when it comes to elections.

Believe it or not, to be able to tell a lie from the truth requires sensual awareness too.

I agree that some of those precious high-percentage chocolates raze the buds like burnt wax, but I've become abjectly addicted to Green & Black's organic chocolate. G&B's version of the classic milk chocolate almond bar is Hershey's transfigured, translated into heaven, felicity incarnate by the mouthfeel, liquified, chewed or gobbled. If such delights are snobbery, bring on the guillotine.

We might ask Mr. Broudy whether he would also recommend we avoid the elitist sin of eating filet mignon or even sirloin steak -- why would we waste our money on it, after all, when we can duck into a fast food joint and spend a fraction of the money on a perfectly decent American hamburger?

This article suggests that gourmet cocoa products are a recent arrival in the U.S. but with the implicit idea that Europe has always had fine chocolate. Why not celebrate that some Americans have awoken from their Hershey-induced decades of slumber to enjoy something with a more sophisticated taste? After you eat some nice chocolate it's pretty hard to go back to your standard Hershey milk chocolate, which I find leaves a nasty aftertaste. But hey. I can still enjoy an M&M on its own merit from time to time. I would just never compare it to a bar of fine dark chocolate because it's a completely different experience.

Consumption of expensive goods will always be tied together with status and class aspiration, but in most things, there is still some perceived advantage or superiority which attracts people. Some people eat nice chocolate because it tastes good. Having chocolate tasting parties and investigating "terroirs" only smacks of snobbery if one refuses to acknowledge that there is any variation in the quality of food in the world.

Moreover, it is obvious that Broudy has no problem with people who like dark chocolate, asside from the associate snobbery. And on this point, hear hear!

The problem is -- people who waste their time and energy worshipping something so trifling. A special chocolate refrigerator for chrisakes? These same people probably purchase specialty made treats for their pets. Instead, why not donate this same time and money to your favorite charity?

"Initially blended with cinnamon and sugar and served as a hot beverage to the privileged classes..."

Not so. Chocolate was not "initially" blended with sugar; not for many hundreds of years. Originally, royalty drank it bitter. Or, as Broudy would say, "like crayons."

Far from the "snobbery" of chocolate being a new thing, the new high percentage dark chocolates and the perception of chocolate as being a rare and valuable commodity is closer to a return to the way chocolate used to be regarded: bitter and high-falutin'.

--Josh

...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.