No joke, thanks to Rhonda Kave.
Kave’s Roni-Sue’s Chocolates, in Essex Market in the Lower East Side, combines bacon, buttercrunch, chocolate and chili-dusted redskin peanuts to make their bacon buttercrunch, a yummy mix of sweet, salty and spicy. For more adventurous choco-baco-holics, there’s the pig candy, better known as chocolate-covered bacon.
Traditional chocolate lovers may balk at the margarita truffle or the beer-and-pretzel caramel, but Roni Sue takes her chocolate seriously. According to Kave’s daughter Allison (the proprietress of First Prize Pies, whose root beer cream pie is the reason we went to Essex Market in the first place), Rhonda makes the chocolate by hand in small batches the store most mornings.
In addition to the delicious bacon buttercrunch, Keith and I tried the beer-and-pretzel caramel, a blueberry truffle and two chili truffles, one of which was way too spicy for me. The blueberry and beer-and-pretzel were good, but the bacon buttercrunch stole the show. It would make an excellent ice cream topping, but it wowed as a snack too.
The chocolate was a little expensive — $2 per piece — but pretty great. It made me want to revisit The Sweet Life, another tasty LES chocolatier.
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