Candy Food Junk food

Review: Porta Banane chocolate bar

Porta Banane chocolate bar
The Porta Banane chocolate bar has a pretty wrapper. If a giant banana illustration doesn't make you think "Banana!", well, then, I don't know what would.

Everyone knows bananas and chocolate are great together. Sliced bananas are a delight when dipped in chocolate fondue. The chocolate-topped banana split is an ice-cream-shop staple for a reason. Banana bread just isn’t the same without chocolate chips. And chocolate-covered frozen bananas? The Bluth Empire had to start somewhere, didn’t it?

So why not make all of our lives easier and put the flavours together in a chocolate bar? No messy syrup, no chocolate to melt – just a heavenly pairing in portable form.

My initial fear with anything banana flavoured is that it’ll taste like that liquid antibiotic medicine I had to swallow as a kid. Banana is a hard food flavour to nail without it tasting terrible. I usually avoid banana-flavoured candies, because I’m almost always disappointed.

The Pitch: “Milk chocolate with banana flavoured filling.” That’s it, spelled out in English, French and German.

The Look: Basic brown and black packaging, with a realistic-looking banana illustration on the front. Made in Germany by Ludwig Weinrich GmbH. The bar is a series of pillow-shaped chocolate bumps, each one containing filling. Little chocolate lines act as reinforcement. Curious.

The Taste: I’m getting flavours of honeydew melon and cantaloupe, but not a whole lot of banana. The chocolate quality is OK, but not spectacular, and the filling is sweet and fruity. On the plus side, the limited banana notes that are there don’t remind me at all of other artificial banana flavours I’ve tasted. It’s not an offensive taste, but nor is it a very banana-ish taste.

Watch the creamy white filling slowly ooze from a Porta Banane chocolate bar. Yum?

RATINGS AND DETAILS

Cost: $1.98 for a 100 gram bar at the Italian Centre Shop (South) in Edmonton.

Value for cash money: Very good.

Availability: Italian Centre. Don’t know where else. It’s one of those strange import things.

Nutrition?: Per 40 grams: 170 calories, 6 grams of fat, 28 mg of sodium, 1 gram of fibre, 2 grams of protein.

The verdict: Not a bad chocolate bar, especially for the price. But you can hardly taste the banana, and banana is supposed to be the point of the bar. Sigh. I guess I’ll be sticking to banana splits for now. (First-world problems … )

Each filled chocolate square looks decidedly pillowy.

3 Comments

  1. Value…reasonably good(I’d say that ‘Very’ is stretching it). I’ve seen them at Army & Navy…discount store/discount chocolate…pretty much. Though I suppose it could be worse.

    • Hmm. You got me thinking about the value. I suppose it’s always a relative thing based on what you’re judging it against. In this case, I think I figured if someone was going to spend $1.25 on a Kit-Kat, then $1.98 for something larger and much more interesting was worth the extra pocket change.

      I wouldn’t call it a premium chocolate bar, and the price reflects that. But it’s also above the typical waxy dollar-store candy-bar class of confections.

  2. I saw this and a lot of other Porta chocolates at the KK Foods on Whyte Ave.
    I tried the coffee one…didnt like as much..still lies in my fridge.