Askinosie Chocolate Kicks Askinosie

It isn’t every day that a new, serious, bad boy chocolate maker comes on the scene. But one hath arrived: Askinosie chocolate.

“Bad boy?” you say. “What kind of street creds does this Askinosie Chocolate company have, that you confer the rebel-serious badboy status? Askinosie… Any name that is so obscure that it can, in this day and age, still procure its own, unadulterated internet URL is surely just some couch-potato hobbyist toying with co-op cacao beans in a toaster oven.”

Howler MonkeyWell, quite simply, such is not the case. Shawn Askinosie had it all: Money (criminal defense lawyer), Religion (Christian). Enabled by money from the former and obeisance to the latter, he has ventured into that most dark, sensual, and alien land: chocolate. For a man whoKirtland’s Warbler “loved the law since I can remember,” Shawn Askinosie is also manifestly attentive to the call of nature at its most unfathomable, at its most flagrantly indifferent to the constraints of human convention. Askinosie chocolate sings like the savagely furred bellow monkey. Askinosie chocolate also sings like a schoolgirl, like a castrati, like the uber-rare Kirtland’s warbler, and like the family cicada.

Askinosie Soconusco 75% Chocolate bar (85g/3 oz)Askonosie Chocolate’s Soconusco 75% dark chocolate bar is, as far as I know, the first single origin dark chocolate bar to treat Mexican chocolate seriously. This is an excellent dark chocolate in the French tradition. The flavors are a crazy rich combination of earthiness and dried fruits. In fact, why parse the tastes for you, when the bar is freely available. (We sell it online at The Meadow (atthemeadow.com), though Askinosie has also taken the annoying step (why must we square off against The Maker?) of selling it online themselves).

I will share the unfettered critiques of two of my most esteemed critics.

On Askinosie Chocolate the seven year old inveighs. “Dark, a little bit bitter. I think it tastes a little bit like seaweed. Except that it is a little bit stronger. Of the texture, he says, “it kind of has a crunch like ripe coconut.”The four year old, mouth contorted by outlandish phonics: “Askinosie tastes like every kind of treat in the whole wide word.” Later, after a second tablet, he adds, “I was sucking on it for a really, really long time, and it tasted kind of like an ice cream cone.”