(With my apologies to Robert Cormier, whose batshit insane books informed at least a hearty sliver of puberty, and as such, my most nostalgic of chocolate eating days.)

photo: Scott Beale/United Hemispheres, Jan. 2010

It seems like everyone is talking chocolate lately. Chocolate, like beer and burgers before it, is the latest consumer product to be run through an intense marketing sieve—netting a whole crop of ambitious artisanal upstarts. All well and good, the question for me is, “Five bucks for chocolate?!”

San Francisco-based TCHO is that $5 chocolate bar, the latest entry to a mass-tege market that has come a long way from Godiva. United’s Hemispheres Magazine dedicated serious real estate in this month’s issue to wax poetic on the company’s science-meets-art approach to chocolate making. And, that’s true: TCHO isn’t your traditional chocolatier: founded by a former NASA engineer and in San Francisco, they don’t tweak; they beta release. Where other factories run on cranks and pulleys, they use an iPhone application. In developing release 1.0 as they called it, they ‘crowd-sourced’, just like lousy news agencies do on twitter. They gave the chocolate out to everyone and gathered opinions and observations. The prevailing theme: ‘chocolatey’, which is painfully useless, given the product they were asked to survey, is, uh…chocolate. Still, crowd sourcing, iPhone apps—that’s cool, absolutely. Tons of nerd love for all that. To me, however, the most important thing isn’t some sleek package or a confusing name.

How does it taste? It is quite good, and it grows on me. There’s a fruity, bitter, dark chocolate bite that gives way to a milky, almost malt-ball aftertaste. The lingering taste in my mouth far surpasses the first bite. After the chocolate breaks down in your mouth, you get this taste vaguely reminiscent of brownies—the chocolate, yes, but that almost fudge or cake-like quality brownies can have.

Where the trend in boutique chocolate seemed to slamming crap into our chocolate a la Vosges (bacon and cheese in your chocolate, anyone?), TCHO is about a fetish for purity; no hiding the chocolate with flavors or nuts. Just really high quality, fair-trade chocolate.

Overall, $5 is a touch on the steep side for chocolate, but this is slow food. Scarfing down the whole chunk won’t satiate your appetite nor will you have a chance to appreciate all the nuance they’ve managed to stuff in here. Consider it a special treat—as chocolate always was growing up, and know that this is a chocolate that takes itself very seriously.