DREAMS OF NORWEGIAN CHOCOLATE

My dear friend Thomas is back in his homeland of Norway, and I’ve given him an assignment: get me some Crispo bars. The Crispo is essentially a Nestle Crunch bar… but so much better. The Belgians and Swiss get all the credit for great chocolate, but the Norwegians are no slouches.

In 1999, Thomas and his family hosted me in Norway for two weeks and I immediately fell in love with the place. It’s a beautiful country with beautiful people and after a day I was convinced I had died and gone to heaven. Then I walked into a convenience store looking for a snack and encountered the Crispo. The Chocolate was rich and very creamy, the crisped rice was in the proper proportion, and there was even a hint of malt. It was like seeing the face of God… as manifest through crispy chocolate.

I stocked up on Crispo bars during that trip, and again when I visited Norway in 2005, but the supply I’d bring home would rarely last a week.

And so I’ve been Crispo-less for more than three years, but a visit from my dealer (Thomas) will change all that. He’s promised to bring some back for me and I’m so excited I could pee.

The handoff will likely happen while I’m in Los Angeles during an extended layover before continuing on to Turkey. I’ve been thinking a lot about those little chocolate bars, and what an odd existence they’ll have. They’ve likely already started their lives in a factory outside Oslo. Then they’ll find their way to the western portion of the country.

But what happens next will set these Crispos apart from their brethren. They’ll be plucked from their homes and flown halfway around the world to Los Angeles. Yes, these humble hunks of Norwegian chocolate will see the Pacific Ocean. (Assuming they can see, which they can’t.)

Then they’ll be loaded onto a plane and carried to Turkey. That’s right, within the course of a few days, they’ll have been in Scandinavia, North America, and the Ottoman Empire. Then, assuming, they survive Turkey, they’ll be taken back on a plane and transported back to Los Angeles, then on to Oregon… by way of Arizona.

By the time they arrive in Oregon, they may well be the best traveled pieces of chocolate ever. If they have frequent flyer accounts, they certainly will have earned a free flight. If nothing else, they will earn a place in my heart… right before they find a place in my stomach.