Fort Smith Find: "World's Finest" Chocolate Almond

I’m behind on my posts! Trying to get caught up... First up:

Last week I took a trip to Tulsa and Little Rock for a project I’m working on – I flew into Tulsa, rented a car, worked all day, and then drove the four hours to Little Rock to work the next day. Not knowing if there would be a single bite of interesting food in the great expanse of nothingness between Tulsa and Little Rock, I tasked Andrew with finding out if there was any dinner to be had, and boy-howdy did he ever come through.

He flagged R&R’s Curry Express in Fort Smith – an Indian place with stellar reviews and a closing time 45 minutes after I’d be passing through the tiny township. The GPS led me a merry chase, insisting that the restaurant was, in fact, an hour north in Springdale (it was not), and that it was closed (it was not), but when I finally located the place sharing a building with a small independent gas station it was everything I was hoping for.

Papdi chaat - crispy bits of fried naan suspended in an amazing soup of spiced yogurt, tamarind, and mint chutney *swoon*

Having a company card and a slightly exorbitant daily food budget, I ordered the papdi chaat appetizer which showed up looking like a delicious Indian stew, with crunchy chips of naan suspended in a sweet, complex, creamy, delicious sludge of mint and yogurt and goodness knows what all else. It was divine, and unlike anything I’d ever had before. As I was still trying to navigate it, a man sitting and eating dinner with his family at the table next to me, called out to me gently in his lilting Indian accent – “ma’am, excuse me. You’re supposed to mix it up. Mix it all up, add a little salt, and eat it with a spoon – it’s good!” This was the point where I noticed he was wearing an apron, and realized that I was in the presence of the restaurant owner.

What ensued, was a thoroughly delightful meal. The malai kofta was delicious, the mystery appetizer was crazy good, and I got to know the gentleman and his wife who own both the restaurant and the gas station next door. They moved to Fort Smith from LA almost 10 years ago, looking for a small town to raise their kids in, opened the gas station, and then decided to expand their operation when the space next door opened up. These hard-working entrepreneurs happily conversed with their kids in fluent Hindi, the daughters regularly came by my table to top off my iced tea, they all assured me that staying past closing time was absolutely fine, and, as I was winding down and looking for the check, the second daughter appeared at my table with a box of chocolate, asking if I’d like to buy a bar to help her school purchase new computers.

Yes. Yes, indeed, I would.

I retrieved the last of my cash from the car, purchased a bar, and got back on the road to Little Rock.

One of the things I love the most about traveling is finding little hidden gems and supporting local businesses with my reimbursable dollars. This was exactly the kind of place that I truly love giving business to. Right down to the young chocolate seller running out to my car after I left to make sure that I’d gotten a straw with my to-go iced tea, this restaurant is awash with the delicious food and lovely, personable feel that makes me really look forward to the next time I get to drive through Fort Smith. Hopefully next time I’ll get to visit more than 30 minutes before close.

Item: Almond 

Percentage: Who knows! Probably in the 20s, if I had to hazard a guess

Made By: World’s Finest Chocolate 

Made in: Chicago, IL   

Purchased At: R&R's Curry Express 
Purchase Price: $1

Review: This is pretty much an almond Hershey’s Kiss in bar form, but maybe a little heavier on the vanillin and a little lighter on the chocolate than Hershey’s. Sugar content is about the same. Strong notes of vanillin, powdered milk, and nostalgia. As Andrew said, “It’s the finest World’s Finest Chocolate I’ve ever had.” Not exactly a bar for chocolate snobs who are hung up on cacao content (*ahem*), but a perfectly reasonable nibble for dessert or to take the edge off an afternoon sweet tooth. The one thing the bar really gets right is the size – at just 1.3 ounces it’s quite small, but the size is actually about perfect for how sweet it is, and the bar is divided up into four nice, bite-sized chunks, making it easy and enjoyable to demolish. Plus, it’s for a good cause!

Chocolate Bar: Meh

R&R’s Curry Express in Fort Smith, AR: Highly Recommend

With Love, Kat

Travel for Business: Blueberry Nib

Ah, Colorado, you beautiful creature, you. 

One of the luxuries of having a job that requires some travel is the ability to take full advantage of that travel for personal pleasure. Most of my travel includes visits to exotic destinations like Amarillo, Mobile AL, Tulsa, OK, or the ever-confusing Columbus, Indiana (every place has its charms, of course…), but every once in a while I get to go somewhere a little more compelling. A Memphis, New Orleans, Austin… or Denver.

When it happens, I usually try and maneuver the trip so that I’m there on a Monday or a Friday, and arrange to stay for the weekend. Cummins picks up the tab for the airfare, and I just have to arrange for lodging, transportation, and entertainment. Not a bad deal at all. In this case, my opportunity came a few weeks ago disguised as a Project Management class in Denver.

So, I left behind the 65-degree late-January weather of the DFW metroplex, and walked off the plane into a climate fully 40 degrees colder than what I’d left. Driving to the hotel, there were mounds of ice in the parking lots, where the snow had been ploughed to the side weeks ago and left to partially melt into rock-like sculptural formations. 

The project management class was informative if unremarkable, and I got to meet some key colleagues, tour the Denver branch locations, and gather helpful information for a number of projects. Beyond that, there were a couple of late nights of “networking” (aka, drinking and playing darts and pool), which made the days in class seem far, far longer than they actually were. 

On Friday, I put my coworkers on planes back to their various destinations, rented another car, and headed to Boulder where my dear friend Ben and his wife and kids have a house right in the shadow of the breathtaking Flatiron Mountains.

Boulder is one of my favorite places in the world – it is beautiful, big-hearted, and profoundly active, with an adorable earthy, hipster streak. The people here care about the integrity of their bike shops and sustainable sourcing of their food. The farmer’s market is a major attraction, and there’s a minor festival whenever notable new crops come in. There are bike and walking trails everywhere, buskers on the streets, and in the summer the local kids splash in bone-chillingly cold streams of pure mountain runoff. The Pearl Street Market is a heart-warming celebration of locally-minded shopping and craftsmanship, with shops specializing in everything from gorgeous old-school wooden puzzles, to tea and teapots, to beautiful hand-crafted hats, to art glass, to kites, to chocolate. 

Boulder is also a great chocolate town; one of the few places where kitchen supply stores and bookshops alike have entire end caps dedicated to gorgeous, delightful locally crafted chocolate bars.

This particular weekend was of the sweet, quiet, domestic variety, making up for the carousing of the week with plenty of wholesome company, good food, and early bedtimes. I went ghost hunting and made paper crowns with the 4-and-a-half year-old and cooed at the baby while he chewed on my knuckles. With the grown-ups, I talked a little work, some politics, and about parenthood, poetry, minimalism, family, bravery, and goodness knows what all else. We got the kiddo new boots and took a hike down a local trail, where I got to walk on water. For real. It was frozen, but whatever. I was psyched.

Ben and I also watched The Lobster which received a well-deserved nomination for Best Screenplay at the Oscars. It’s super weird, but truly amazing. (Like, SUPER weird. Be prepared. Definitely watch it, but be prepared.)

It was a soul-nourishing weekend at high altitudes, and although I didn’t get to spend as much time playing in the mountains themselves or perusing the chocolate selection downtown as I would have liked, I was able to snag a bar from the local bookstore while Ben & co. were picking up supplies for dinner. . 

Enjoy, my friends. Preferably in front of a crackling fireplace with a dog at your feet and a 4 year-old narrating Amelia Bedelia to you.

Item: Blueberry Nib
Percentage: 65% cacao 

Made By: Concertos in Chocolate
Made In: Boulder, CO
Purchased At: Boulder Book Store
Purchase Price: $4.25

Review:   At 65% this one is on the lighter end of what I typically go for. Concertos is a local Boulder chocolatier that keeps it simple and classy with classic, time-tested combinations of flavors combined in fun, interesting ways. Check out their "Dirty Chai" bar if you're feeling feisty. With both dried blueberries and cocao nibs this one is very texturally busy - the cocao nibs lend it a nice, darker edge and anchor the chocolatey flavor, while the blueberries bring an unexpected sweet, chewy pop. This is whimsical chocolate, folks. I still haven't really figured out how much I like weird textures in my chocolate, and my relationship with cocoa nibs is complicated, but this definitely is a fun, charming bar. Would eat again.
 
Recommend


With love, Kat

The Calamitous Campaign: Super Dark Coconut Ash & Banana

I am a singularly blessed human being for many reasons - being born to a loving, attentive, well-educated family with great taste in food and a penchant for sci-fi is a pretty darn good deal. Being a reasonably attractive white, middle-class gal in the richest country on earth, also stacks the deck in my favor pretty heavily. I've also been blessed with great friends, and a staggeringly charmed work history. In fact, in my 8+ years in the workforce, I've never dreaded going to work. I've never had a single job that I didn't like, work that I didn't enjoy, or boss that I didn't get along with. 

In other words, something eventually had to give. 

Photo & Design Credit: Nathan Myers

The past two weeks have been so tremendously, comically awful, that I have to believe there's been some kind of radical, cathartic readjustment of my karmic balance. It's made more fascinating by the fact that running the annual United Way Campaign is something I look forward to all year long and is one of my very favorite parts of my job. The universe has a particularly bleak sense of humor sometimes. 

Even before the campaign began, it had already adopted a tone of gloom and disaster - our big plans for a softball tournament were quashed when our field reservation was summarily canceled by the City of Grand Prairie, one of my planning team members had to undergo emergency surgery, leaving us shorthanded for several events, and one of my campaign leads suffered a tragic, unexpected death in her immediate family.

After the campaign started, we had dismal turnout for one event after another, a reporting breakdown, confusion with the online pledging system, the dunk tank was damaged by previous renters, the big grill was mysteriously reclaimed by its previous owner and nowhere to be found, no one brought anything to the bake sale despite it being an annual tradition for almost a decade, we suffered supply shortages, lack of enthusiasm and volunteers, over-communication, under-communication, scheduling mishaps, late starts, missing pieces... Basically one calamity after another. In fact, in our two weeks of "fun," there wasn't a single event or activity that didn't have some kind of tragedy, complication, or disappointment attached to it.

And finally, on our last day of the campaign, I went to the refrigerator to take inventory for our afternoon nacho bar, only to find that the over-zealous cleaning crew threw out all of the food for the event. All of it. The fridge, which had previously been home to a quart of frozen fajita meat, two bags of shredded cheese, two unopened jugs of salsa, a bag of shredded lettuce, and half a pot of beans (in my mother's pressure cooker, no less), stood there, gleaming, as pristine and empty as if it had been delivered that morning. 

And then the fire alarm went off.

Perfect. 

Still, with the help of a small team of stalwart, generous, adaptable, and determinedly good-natured volunteers, the campaign is concluded having successfully raised more than $9,000 for good works in Tarrant County ($18k, counting the matching funds), and I'm more than ready to move on with the rest of my life. I'm immensely grateful that on Monday I get to put away the flamingo decorations, disassemble the jail cell, and apply my energies to chasing down customer loyalty surveys, writing that Amarillo grant, organizing the next set of volunteer events, planning that Louisiana workshop, setting up interviews for our next batch of interns, composing a perky, upbeat Campaign write-up for the newsletter, eating lots and lots of chocolate, and looking forward to next year's campaign. God knows it has to be better than this one.

It was a worthy battle. I'm glad I did it. THANK GOD IT'S OVER. 

*sigh*

Time for chocolate.

Item: Super Dark Coconut Ash & Banana
Percentage: 72%

Made By: Vosges
Made In: Chicago, IL
Purchased At/Price: Gift (but retail is $8 - this is the good stuff)

Review: The Vosges Super Dark line is a fascinating and somewhat intimidating collection of "SUPER FOODS + DARK CHOCOLATE." The chocolate itself if great, with a really dense, clean chocolate flavor. The banana is both unusual and pretty dominant, with tiny, barely-there flecks of crunch distributed throughout the otherwise smooth, straightforward chocolate. This is not a busy bar. There's also a great ashy aftertaste which is very subtle and quite likely an acquired taste. It's just a hint, but it adds a savory note to the flavor profile. This really comes across as a chocolate and banana bar, but the coconut ash adds a little somethin'-somethin' that's quite nice. Also, my main squeeze informed me that he tastes far more coconut than banana, so I'm not totally sure what gives. The package informs me the health benefits are simply off the charts, though, so regardless it's probably a good thing to be eating.
 
RECOMMEND

With love,
 - K