BY STEPHANIE SALTZMAN*
Don’t get me wrong: I love a good cup of coffee, and the utterly luxurious feeling that goes along with savoring it, sipping it slowly, clutching it with Lorelai Gilmore–like reverence. But I’m also no stranger to that I-need-caffeine-right-this-second feeling. There are those mornings when I’d chug my entire Starbucks order if only it wouldn’t burn my tongue/spill all over my new sweater/give me a nauseating stomachache. So that’s where my newest discovery, Il Morso Coffee Bars, comes in.
They’re little one-bite chocolate bars that you can munch to get a quick fix of caffeine, almost like taking a shot of espresso, except…chocolate. The bars are available in four flavors, with varying caffeine contents: Americano has 18 milligrams; Coffee & Cream has 15 milligrams; Mocha has 14 milligrams; and Matcha Green Tea, a white-chocolate base that’s green and a little grassy in flavor, has just 7 milligrams. To put things in perspective, the average cup of coffee has about 95 milligrams of caffeine, so even the strongest bar isn’t that intense—you’re not going to wind up with energy-drink-like jitteriness. And if you’re really worried about overdoing it, there’s always the option to take little nibbles of the bar and not gobble up the whole thing in one quick chomp. (Good luck with that.)
I tried out each flavor (not all at once) with mostly pleasant results, though as I’m not a huge fan of white chocolate, that one was my least favorite. With each bar, I noticed a slightly more awake, caffeinated effect, but nothing that made my heart race. And though the bars are made with chocolate, they’re not as sugary as you’d think: Each one has only 1 gram of sugar, 1.5 grams of fat, and 25 calories. The biggest downside is that each 40-count box retails for $59.99, meaning each bar costs around $1.50—most likely not shaving much off the cost of a full cup of coffee. And remember, you’re only getting a fraction of the caffeine.
If you’re trying to wean yourself off of coffee or are intrigued by the idea of being able to pop a piece of chocolate for a midday jolt, I’d highly recommend it. I’ve never really needed an extra excuse to work chocolate into my day, but I’ve also been telling myself that eating one of these bars is probably less likely to stain teeth the way drinking coffee or tea can. But for really early mornings when consuming chocolate seems out of the question (call me crazy, but sometimes I just can’t bring myself to eat candy first thing in the morning), I’ll still be indulging in a cup or two.
