Aspiring Korean playboy Wan Hyuk Park recently returned from Australia bearing gifts.  His mother sent him to Australia to perfect his English.  He enrolled in one of those dime-a-dozen language institutes in Perth.  Nearly all the students are Korean, and he rented a flat with three other Korean playboy wannabees.  One year later, his Korean language skills are better than ever.  The most valuable thing Wan Hyuk took out of Australia was the ability to append the word "mate" on the end of every sentence. 

Well, the second most valuable thing.   The most valuable consists of several different chocolate bars for review on the Chocolate Republic, bars I can't find in Thailand.   My wife buys kimchi on a bi-monthly basis from Wan Hyuk's mother.   Wan Hyuk's mother wanted to thank us for being steady customers and partially justify that Wan Hyuk's trip to Oz hadn't been a complete waste of time.   

This Nestle Peppermint Crisp bar was Wan Hyuk's favorite, "the best chocolate bar I've ever had, mate," he said.  He created a Korean-language blog dedicated to the peppermint crisp bar and drafted several poems about it.  Originally a South African creation, Australia, through Nestle, has made the bar one of Oz's native sons and honored it with Australian citizenship.   Could it be that good?

When I heard the name, I thought of a milk chocolate bar with crispy mint wafers throughout, something like the Thin Mints Girl Scout cookies I ate as a kid.  Those Thin Mints were tasty, and I could readily sympathize with Wan Hyuk's world being turned upside down if this Peppermint Crisp, by 2011's standards, were as remotely tasty as those Thin Mints by 1977's standards.  The Peppermint Crisp is nothing like a Thin Mint.  It's a very, very thin layer of milk chocolate coating a collection of peppermint toffee straws packed tightly together.   This crispy peppermint sugar is known as kracknel Down Under.

I had to do a bit of research online to find out the bar's cocoa solid content.  Like all mass produced low-end bars, this was not on the label.  An enquiry to Nestle Australia took a week to get answered, and when they finally replied, from an e-mail address I could not respond to, they referenced a promised attachment that was never added to the e-mail.  No surprise to find the cocoa solids are at an ultra low 20%.

If you judge this bar solely by the quality of its chocolate, you're not in for a treat.  Nestle is a mass producer of chocolate.  Everyone knows they don't manufacture high quality stuff, although their Nestle Club line, only available in Oz, shocked me with how good and reasonably priced it was. The milk chocolate in the Nestle Peppermint Crisp is very, very mediocre.  The real gimmick to this bar is the crackly peppermint within. And yes, it does crackle and offer a nice twist on the mint and chocolate combination.  Non choco-connoisseurs, like my wife, are impressed.

But let's peel away the gimmicks, shall we?  This bar isn't particularly cheap per gram.  A glance at the ingredients off Nestle Australia's web site shows ample vegetable fats, emulsifiers, and preservatives.  Hey, use the cheap stuff if you feel you must, but at least fool me with chemicals that I'm eating a product that tastes better than it really is.  Nestle doesn't have the chops to pull off that illusion here.

By all rights, this bar shouldn't even be on the Chocolate Republic.  It's a peppermint sugar confection with a bit of chocolate.  The chocolate is an afterthought.   So little thought went into this milk chocolate that the chocolate-making in this candy could have been outsourced to a Bangladeshi chocolate factory with zero experience and the bar wouldn't have tasted substantially different.  The Chocolate Republic would prefer the chocolate in the bars reviewed here to be the first thought. 

A better investment from Nestle for a chocolate and mint combo is their Nestle Club Mint Infusion.  The chocolate and mint in that one are both real and not something created by committee of chemistry experts -- and it costs 30% less per gram.   

Enjoy it as a kid.   As an adult, move on to bigger and better things.