Reggae Reggae X Hot Scotch Bonnet Chilli Chocolate

Just when you thought Levi Roots had covered every single cuisine and every single corner of the food market, you open up a Christmas present and what do you find but some Reggae Reggae chocolate. I shouldn’t have been surprised – but I was.  I feel like I keep abreast of these things, but this one had passed me by. It is a limited edition product so if you want to buy some, you may well struggle as it’s probably obsolete. However if after reading what I have to say about it, you still want a bar then good luck to you.

Chocolate and chilli is a heavenly combination. William Curley does a brilliant hot chocolate with chilli, and Green and Blacks do a half decent chocolate chilli bar too. So I was really looking forward to seeing what Levi’s take on it would be.

The packaging warns you in a few places on the front that it is hot. Firstly there’s the 4 chilli symbol with “Extra Hot!” written next to it, then a bit lower down it says X HOT again and in case you didn’t get the message, it says at the bottom “SERIOUSLY HOT!”.

I read all this and still I didn’t believe it. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve had a sweet that’s called  “mega sour” or “super sour” and when you eat it, it’s like a fizzy wine gum. So I thought I can handle this, it’s just marketing spin, how hot is a bar of chocolate really going to be?

The answer to that question is VERY HOT INDEED. I opened the packet and it looked harmless enough, just like a bar of chocolate really, so I broke off three squares and stuck them in, in one go. It took about 25 seconds before the hiccups started, at 45 seconds I thought I might throw up, at 57 seconds 3 squares of half chewed chocolate were spat in the bin, at 1min 16 seconds I was having a muller corner to cool down and now I’m sat writing this with a pot of Earl Grey at my side.

Now it could be that I am just a wimp when it comes to hot things, but I don’t think that is true. Quite often a bit of spice will give me hiccups, but I’ve learnt to deal with that and enjoy the heat anyway. This creation from Levi was an altogether different beast. The fact that it was too hot would be OK if the chocolate tasted nice, but it was a horrid, plastic, sub advent calendar concoction. I suppose Levi thought the quality of the chocolate wouldn’t matter because all anybody would actually taste is heat – he got that wrong.

In hindsight this was obviously a novelty product. The reason it is limited edition is because nobody in their right mind would buy it twice, and as a business model that is deeply flawed.

Reggae Reggae X Hot Scotch Bonnet Chilli Chocolate 100g £ – don’t know it was a gift!

1/10

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