Dark chocolate is like wine: an acquired taste. While I do enjoy all different types of chocolate, even the bitter ones, I must agree with Ralph. Cadbury Dairy Milk is also my favorite... something about the creaminess and flavor that can not be matched... not to mention the price tag!

I've done a dark chocolate tasting at Hotel Chocolat. It was fun, and fun to compare the dark chocolates side by side. I got to try one with pink peppercorns, and it's absolutely addictive.

Having said that, my go-to-chocolate is Dove's milk chocolate. Good chocolate is good chocolate. I can't complain. :)

Personally, I've always loved a good ol' Hershey bar. The plain kind.

I love dark chocolate! I can't get enough. Although I do eat milk chocolate from time to time, I always prefer dark chocolate.

I agree with alllebasii that it can be an acquired taste for some though. For me it was instant attraction though.

Unfortunately, my boyfriends HATES dark chocolate. So I can't really include it in all my homemade desserts.

One of my favorite things about the rise of fancy chocolates is that the lighter chocolate quality has finally caught up a bit. I've realized I only like the lightest of the dark chocolates and I love the milk chocolates.

I'm a fan of dark chocolate, but I agree with Ralph in that 91% is just to much for me unless I've got a cup of seriously sweet tea. My favorite is an 85%, the perfect combo of bitter and sweet.

I love dark chocolate, but beyond about 70% [for me] it just gets too much and you loose out on the benefit that chocolate gets from adding a sweetness. Darker chocolate, really only works for me when it's used to coat something that's already sweet. I just need that sweet/bitter mix for it to be really successful.

Regular milk chocolate has it's place, but I tend to eat it less "straight up" like I do with dark chocolate.

I disagree about dark chocolate necessarily being an acquired taste. I've hated milk chocolate all my life, even in hot cocoa. It's too sweet for me. I'm perfectly happy eating dark chocolate. Generally, the darker the better, but I draw the line at baking chocolate.

If dark chocolate is an acquired taste, I acquired it young, as I remember eating it as a child.

But I'm not a dark chocolate fangirl. I like it with dried blueberries, hate it with peanut butter, and rarely eat chocolate "straight" at all.

I am in both world. when baking I love dark chocolate I even use 99% cocoa, but this must have some sugar or sweetening. a good 70% can be good with a coffee and/or a cigar but for pure enjoyment nothing beat the "milk extra chocolate" from Lindt, strongly recommended.

I only eat milk chocolate if all the dark chocolate is gone :-)
I don't think chocolate has gone too far at all. It's not like they've outlawed the creamy stuff. I think it's nice people are being creative and testing boundaries.

If you are eating dark chocolate and suffering through it. It's crappy chocolate. Chocolate shouldn't be bitter. If it is, chances are it wasn't processed right.

And if your favorite chocolate is a cadbury bar. You should not be writing articles about chocolate. It's not even made with cocoa beans. Plus you can taste dirt when you eat it.

I'm sorry, but I work in a chocolate shop and it annoys me when people think they are super knowledgeable about chocolate because their favorite is a 75% bar. If it comes from a grocery store, sorry to say it, but it's not really chocolate. Can you buy a good wine or cheese at the grocery store? Maybe in other countries you can but not here. Same goes for chocolate.

I'm going to stop here for fear of seeming wayyyy too crazy.

White chocolate for me.

Hal, yes! I love Lindt! I even love their white chocolate.

It's dark chocolate for me--I find that milk chocolate leaves that dairy taste in my mouth that I don't care for. Like many have said before, I really love it combined with other flavors, namely marzipan and orange :) And Ritter Sport dark chocolate with hazelnuts is a favorite around here!

After having access to and trying out several different specialty chocolate bars, I've found that I can't eat supermarket chocolate anymore. It's hard for me to eat any milk chocolate - way too sickly sweet. Stuff like Hershey's just tastes... off. The texture is wrong, the way you have to chew it and the way it melts... I feel like I'm eating fake chocolate. I won't even buy the more expensive supermarket chocolates like Lindt and Ghiradelli. Some of my favorite bars have been ones with chili dried mango and cured bacon.

I used to hate dark chocolate because it was always bitter and sometimes even a bit chalky. But one day all I had left was a dark chocolate bunny from purdy's and I actually really liked it.

I went to pastry school and we ended up in a lesson on eating chocolate. We just stood there and ate chocolate. Pretty soon it seemed to me that dark chocolate was actually much nicer than milk chocolate. I'd been converted.

You just have to find good chocolate. Even milk chocolate has its offenders (ever had a solid bar of nestle chocolate? It's disgusting). 91% might be taking it a bit too far with me, but your standard dark chocolate is still fairly sweet. The only difference SHOULD be that it doesn't have milk in it (but sometimes that's not true so vegans still have to watch out for that).

To QChan: I bought Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk Triple Creme Brie last night at Whole Foods, so yes—you can buy good cheese at the grocery store. It was next to it's good friend, Roquefort. And why can't someone who likes Cadbury write an article about chocolate? Good food is good food. Period. Let's take the pretension out of it. I can eat Dove milk chocolate until the cows come home. I buy that at CVS.

I love dark chocolate, as does my mom, and at Halloween--surprise! so does my 4-yr old. So maybe it's acquired but maybe it's genetic.

That said, my husband kept buying me darker and darker chocolate. At 85% I told him I'd be happy to cook something with it but wasn't really into just eating it. And I do like milk chocolate, too! It seems like the fad has gone to the point of one-up-manship. I'm waiting for 110% dark with licorice and iron shavings. OK, OK, we get it, you're really tough!

I love dark chocolate because it's not so overbearingly sweet as milk chocolate, my sweet tooth is pretty weak. But I definitely like to have nuts in my chocolate. I did try some with bacon. Very novel. The sweet and salty were kind of nice, but I probably wouldn't go too far out of my way for it.

Milk chocolate tastes watered down to me. I vastly prefer the intensity of dark chocolate. My favorite is an excellent quality dark chocolate with a hit of chili pepper; I love exploring exotic new flavors. Sometimes they work, sometimes not-- but I think if we take chocolate too seriously, we're missing the point.

So funny... just yesterday, we got a box of very odd chocolates at the office. Dark chocolate with bleu cheese (yum), chocolate laced with tobacco (gross), or hemp seeds, or tomatoes, or black olives. It was interesting, but at the end of the tasting we all just longed for plain chocolate.

That said, I'm a dark chocolate girl. I find 70% to be about my favorite. It's just barely sweet. If anything, I like mine laced with spices for a bit of a kick.

I like dark chocolate, milk chocolate was always a bit sweet for me. The one thing I really dislike about the popularity of dark chocolate is all the cheapening of production, most American brands seem to add milk fat to their dark chocolate now (I'm vegan so they lose my business).

Purdygirl: I think you can get good chocolate at Whole Foods but that is not your typical grocery store to QChan's point.

I think with some large candy bar makers such as Hershey and Cadbury, certain posters might differ on the definition of chocolate. I don't like Hershey. I like a cadbury on occasion but only the ones made in the UK. But for both those bars I see them as a confection and not a true chocolate. (I highly recommend the book "Chocolate Connoisseur" by Chloe Doutre-Roussel for interesting information on how chocolate is made, where it comes from, what its history is etc... but told with so much enthusiasm!)

For chocolate my go to is Valrhona (which I buys slabs of at WF). Manjari has a nice fruity note. But milk chocolate lovers should try Javara Lactee- 40%, and a truly lovely texture.

For a more fancy bar I like Amadei Porcelana. I usually shy away from bars with stuff in it but I recently had a bar from Mast Brothers in Brooklyn that had fleur de sel on it and that was a really nice treat.

This is my first post. I love to talk about chocolate so I finally took the plunge after being a long time lurker!

I haven't tried all these flavored chocolates. I have my favorites and I stick to those: Mexican chocolate is#1 and the best I've tasted out here is made by TAZA (the cinnanmon one). #2 is the chocolate/caramel (cajeta) & sea salt combo, and #3 is a dark chocolate w/ spiciness (I used to get one called Xocaltl). It has to be dark chocolate, milk is too sweet. S-bucks used to sell "Euro drinking chocolate" - tiny espresso cups of hot chocalate (chantico?) that I adored; with whip & caramel on top, that was the ultimate!!!

Hey, don't knock the bacon chocolate! I took a bar of alder-salt bacon flavored chocolate to a party as an impulse buy when I picked up drinks. Half the party tried it, and our verdict? FABULOUS. Everything's better with chocolate, and everything's better with bacon. So naturally, they're awesome together.

I will eat and enjoy almost anything chocolate. I have a handful of Kisses on my desk right now... although I do prefer a super dark, bitter chocolate. Maybe this has something to do with how much I love strong, black coffee and bitter stouts? Having said that, my favorite every day chocolate is Trader Joe's big block of Belgian with almonds.

I worked in a chocolate store for three years, right when the big boom for dark chocolate was beginning, and I still love most milk chocolates more than any other chocolates. People scoff at me sometimes when I say that dark is not my favorite thing.

I don't understand why anyone would want to "suffer" through a chocolate bar. So silly.

If people hadn't been messing around with chocolate, it would still be a beverage.

I enjoy both for different cravings. I have a pretty bad sweet tooth, and milk chocolate is perfect for satisfying it. Other times I want the rich, well, chocolate taste that comes through better in dark. I definitely wouldn't eat 91% straight though, it'd have to be in a baked good or something. :)

I like dark and milk. I prefer to go up a bit in quality for every day eating, and routinely find chocolate that is quite satisfying to my palette at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. And no complaints about the Toblerone bars I can get at CVS.

@cmcinnyc, that made me laugh out loud. I definitely know some people that love one-upping fellow chocolate lovers by insinuating that their seriousness about chocolate is directly related to the % of their chocolate bar.

For me, I like dark and milk chocolate - sometimes I'm in the mood for one or the other, and I do like it with add-ins sometimes. I won't turn up my nose at "supermarket" chocolate (especially Dove milk or Ghiradelli) but I do appreciate a treat of the really good stuff.

the darker, the better!

I love Lindt 90% dark chocolate. The worse chocolate I ever tried was a gourmet brand's wine flavoured chocolate. I had to spit it out. Revolting. Some may like it but for me it wa a step too far.

worst*

i think the point here is that everyone has different taste buds. i don't like blue cheesy notes and my husband doesn't like goat cheese. everyone is wired differently and no one way is better or worse than the other!

I used to like milk chocolate better, but now I find in cloyingly sweet. Just not a fan. I agree, it's an aquired taste

I think what kind of chocolate you like has a lot to do with your taste buds and what you ate as a child. My favorite chocolate in the world is Milka with broken hazelnuts. I also like Ritter Sport. Fazer makes good milk chocolate too - and Swedish milk chocolate you can buy at Ikea.
I am in general more of a fan of Swiss style chocolate than Belgian style - but that's how I was brought up in Austria.
I wouldn't eat Hersheys chocolate even if it was the only chocolate available for the end of times.

my 10 and 12 year old kids prefer dark chocolate - always have.
as do i - but usually i just buy plain dark, without the flavors.

When I found out I was allergic to dairy I wasn't about to give up chocolate so I converted to dark. A few of the brands I love are Dagoba, Lindt, Ritter Sport, and a local Minneapolis chocolatier B.T. McElrath: http://www.btmcelrath.com/ the Salty Dog bar is heavenly. Now I find Hershey's and Mars disgusting. You can call me pretentious if you'd like, but I want the good stuff or nothing at all. :)

I like the flavor of dark chocolate, but I also love the fat content of creamy milk and white chocolates. Lindt truffles are a favorite of mine because they are not too sweet, but the centers are super silky and soft and rich-tasting. *nom*

I used to be a dark chocolate junkie, but after working at a fine European pastry shop for over a year, I got off of a sugar addiction (mostly) and acquired a fat addiction. Lol... Dark chocolate by nature has a low fat profile, so these days I prefer extra milky milk chocolate.