Groceries are so expensive lately, and sometimes a girl just needs some cheap dark chocolate to get her through the day, so I recently set myself the task of comparing different store brand dark chocolate bars from Canada's grocery stores.
I recently did a similar experiment with testing out house brand milk chocolate bars, and I found that there was a brand that was comparable to Cadbury's Dairy Milk (my favourite milk chocolate), so I was interested to see if any of the brands could compare with Lindt's 70% dark chocolate bar, which is my favourite in that category.
The Lindt bar is the perfect mix of bitter with just a touch of sweetness that prevents it from being too potent and it has a nice creaminess that melts in your mouth almost immediately. Right now at No Frills, that particular item costs $4.49 for a 100-gram bar, which feels quite steep to me.
For this test, I stopped at Freshco, No Frills, Loblaws, Metro and Walmart to get dark chocolate bars from Compliments, no name, President's Choice, Irresistibles and Great Value, and I'll be rating each one out of five in terms of how close it is to the Lindt bar that I love.
Great Value
A Great Value brand chocolate bar from Walmart that costs $1.18 for 100 grams.
Walmart's Great Value brand dark chocolate came in at one of the cheapest bars of the day, but the low cost isn't worth it given how poor I find the product to be.
It's very hard and doesn't really melt in the mouth or have an immediate flavour. When the flavour does present itself, it has a sort of plastic-like sweetness and it doesn't really taste like chocolate, let alone dark chocolate, and it's the one bar of the day that I ended up tossing out as I definitely wouldn't eat it again.
Rating: 1/5
Price: $1.18 for 100 grams
No name
An no name brand chocolate bar from No Frills that costs $1.00 for 100 grams.
Next up we have no name dark chocolate, which happened to be the cheapest bar of the day.
This chocolate falls squarely in the realm of "meh" — if it's around, I'll eat it, but I wouldn't ever buy this.
It has a pretty good flavour initially, but it is a bit too sweet for dark chocolate and it had a strange spice at the end, almost as if it had cinnamon in it.
My partner felt the same way about the taste, but upon looking at the ingredients, there was no kind of cinnamon or warm spice listed. Strange!
In terms of texture, it's a little gritty, but it does melt quite nicely after a few seconds.
If funds are super tight, no name might be the way to go, but if you can afford to pay an extra dollar, you should check out Compliments.
Rating: 2.5/5
Price: $1.00 for 100 grams
Compliments
A Compliments brand chocolate bar from Frescho that costs $1.99 for 100 grams.
The Compliments brand of dark chocolate from Freshco has an overall better taste than both no name and Great Value, but it has a few flaws.
The chocolate doesn't melt very nicely on the tongue and actually stays quite intact, so you need to do a bit of chewing to be able to swallow it. It also is a little too bitter for me towards the end of it being in the mouth, which isn't present at the beginning and leaves a slightly unpleasant aftertaste.
Rating: 3/5
Price: $1.99 for 100 grams
President's Choice
A President's Choice brand chocolate bar from No Frills that costs $2.99 for 100 grams.
The President's Choice dark chocolate certainly looked the fanciest with its pretty gold packaging, so I was disappointed to see that there were spots of blooming on the bar (the white-ish spots that means one of the ingredients has separated — totally safe to eat, just a little unappealing to look at).
Despite that, the chocolate has a really nice balance of sweetness to chocolate, so in terms of flavour, I was into it.
The downfall for PC was the texture — in the mouth, it became quite crumbly and stayed very dry, so although the taste was nice, the texture was a little offputting.
Rating: 3.5/5
Price: $2.99 for 100 grams
Irresisitibles
An Irresistibles brand chocolate bar from Metro that costs $2.99 for 100 grams.
And in first place, we have Metro's store brand Irresistibles dark chocolate.
This bar had the same super-pleasing flavour that President's Choice had, but the texture was so much better.
It started to melt almost immediately in a very nice way and turned delightfully creamy. This chocolate is so satisfying that you only need a square or two to placate that chocolate craving and it's the one I'll be keeping in my pantry for when I want a bittersweet little treat.
Rating: 5/5
Price: $2.99 for 100 grams
At $2.99, the Irresistibles dark chocolate from Metro is $1.50 cheaper than the bar of Lindt dark chocolate I prefer at its current price at No Frills, which is considerable savings on a product I'd say is fairly comparable, so that's the item I'll be keeping in my home from now on.
What's interesting to me is that in this taste test of dark chocolate from Canada's store brands, I ranked them in the exact same order I did for the milk chocolate comparison without even realizing I had done so — so at least the brands are consistent in the quality their products, I suppose!
The next time you're at Metro, maybe try out both their milk and dark chocolate store brand products; I think they're pretty darn good, and I'd absolutely serve them alongside a fancy charcuterie board if I was having company over for dinner and drinks.
Pair it with a cheap bottle of wine from the LCBO and you've got yourself a pretty good night!
These prices are confirmed at the time of publishing, but they can change at any time. Taxes and fees may not be included.
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