Customer Reviews

Leonidas Belgian Chocolates: 1 lb Napolitain Sampler Ballotin - Orange, Nibs, Feuilletine, 72% Pure Origin Sao Tome, Milk, White, and Dark Chocolate Squares

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Napolitains are wonderful for people who enjoy chocolate on its own. The pure chocolate pieces are great as an expression of high-quality chocolate. People who enjoy the pleasant bitterness of pure cocoa will be especially impressed by the Sao Tome. The flavored pieces stick with classic combinations and provide some nice variety and contrast. The product descripton's suggestion of offering the assortment after dinner is good, especially with coffee. I find they are very nice to set out at parties or just for everyday guests, too. It's so nice to just have a taste as I run out the door. The best part is that none of these disappoint because they're all chocolate with no mystery fillings.

Leonidas' packaging for shipping will protect the box and ensure it arrives safely. You should get them in 3 days and eat them fresh, although the Napolitains store well, too. They're best if enjoyed at room temperature.

Talk about wonderful chocolate!

This is some of the best you will ever have. Leonidas sends it out fresh, overnight. They don't add paraffin, so the chocolate does melt in your hands, as well as on your tongue.

Each piece is small, with light, buttery, creamy fillings. Each piece is better than the last. They're not as famous as Godiva - but they're better. Much better than Sees, or Ethel M's (which also happen to be pretty good).

I am so glad that Amazon added Leonidas to their selections.

Bought these chocolates as a gift and have been repeatedly thanked and told over and over how fantastic they are.
Delivery was super fast and the boxes were well protected. All in all most satisfactory product and service.

I ordered this for my mother's Mothers' Day gift. She loves good chocolate, and shares my disillusionment with Godiva. This chocolate is wonderful! I tried the milk chocolate, and found it to have a full chocolate flavor with the slight creaminess I love in milk chocolate. My mother tried the Sao Tome, and pronounced it "excellent". We will buy this again.

The crunchy chocolate squares in this box were a real surprise and I love how delicate the crunch is when encased in a burst of delicious chocolate.

You may also enjoy the Mint chocolates. They are delicious after dinner or anytime you want to wake up your taste buds. The mint flavor bursts from these chocolates as if it was encased in little sugar crystals. It is quite perfect and refreshing.

I also love the Cinnamon and Orange. If you have been dreaming of the most delicious orange flavored chocolates in the world, you have to try the Orange Napolitains. I love both equally, although the cinnamon flavor has me completely seduced.

I prefer to savor each piece of chocolate with a cup of coffee, tea or hot chocolate. The warmth of the beverage creates an entirely different experience than if you were to simply taste a square of chocolate on its own.

Once your mouth is warmed, take a small bite of the chocolate square and enter Mint Chocolate Oblivion. The world stops for minutes at a time as you savor a mingling of the best cinnamon you have ever tasted with the silkiest creamiest Belgian chocolate in the world.

My chocolates arrived fast and were as fresh as if I had purchased them in Belgium. They were carefully packaged in the famous gold boxes with signature wrapping and a ribbon. The boxes were then placed in protective Styrofoam containers to protect the chocolates during shipping. The expedited shipping is recommended from May to early September.

~The Rebecca Review

this made a great gift
and i got to try a piece and i must say they are delicious
and well worth the price.

Sent one box to Maman who grew up in Brussels. She remembers these candies and enjoyed them. The other box went to family and they enjoyed them as well.

Makes great gift.

I ordered this as a thank-you gift on Monday morning--it's Wednesday AM and it's already been delivered! I'm impressed!

I've only eaten the dark chocolate with nibs in any quantity, as I can't eat dairy anymore, but it was definitely the best bar chocolate I've ever had. It does melt in your mouth. I've had bits of Leonidas filled chocolates and they're perfectly delicious. So many million times better than Godiva, for example. This was a great deal and a perfect present.

The sampler box comes nicely packaged...gift wrapped with Leonidas printed wrapping paper and tied with a bright neon green bow. The sampler box came inside of a foam container, which I assume they used to keep the temperature stable.
After taking the sampler box out of the foam container and opening it, my nose was greeted with the most heavenly scent of chocolates.
The box is divided into two compartments by a white cardboard sheet. The bottom compartment is packed full of different chocolates, and the top compartment holds the rest in order to make it 1 pound.
I took all the chocolate out and organized them into flavors and was quite dissapointed that there weren't any Cinnamon flavored ones in my sampler. That's the reason I gave this sampler only four stars. I also got a whole bunch of Nibs, and barely any Dark, Milk, and White.
Nonetheless, the choclates are mighty tasty. They seem very fresh. My favorite so far is the 72% pure origin Sao Tome and the white chocolate.

Beautiful packaging, gorgeous little squares of chocolate, but disappointing texture and flavor.

Leonidas did an amazing job packaging this little box of gold, there was no way the final gift package was going to be harmed in any way. The cloth ribbon and beautiful wrapping paper covered a wonderful gold cardboard box. Inside was arranged the prettiest little squares of chocolate. The romance ended after I ate this chocolate.

The box contains a somewhat random assortment of seven different chocolates. Each piece of chocolate is six grams, and the box should contain exactly the same number of each variety. For reasons that are impossible to understand, there were only five orange and three Feuilletine chocolates; but over a dozen dark chocolates.

Why I was disappointed with these chocolates - the flavor and texture.

The nibs are dark 55% cocoa chocolate with little tiny bits of crunchy chocolate particles. The chocolate is slightly sweet, the texture is coarse, and it does not melt evenly. The nib particles seem like bits of coffee bean or sand in the chocolate - not a very pleasant texture.

The Dark chocolate is also 55% cocoa but much lighter in color than the nibs. Several bars in my box had bloomed - the texture was extremely hard, melt was very slow and uneven in my mouth. Overall the flavor was not great. I love dark chocolate. These squares were just not to my liking at all.

White chocolate is fabulous in the hands of expert chocolate makers. The version we are used to is almost all sugar and a really bad substitute. Great white chocolate is somewhat sweet, but typically has a very pure clean chocolate flavor and aroma; along with a smooth melt. This white chocolate should have been like the great version, instead it was exactly in the middle - a bit too sweet, and dull chocolate flavor. Fortunately, these seemed to be much fresher than the other chocolates in the box.

Feuilletine is a 32% cocoa milk chocolate with bits of wafer in the square. The wafers contain gluten. The chocolate is too sweet and left an oily film on the roof of my mouth. The melt was uneven. The wafers were a distraction, not enough crunch like a Kit Kat, but just enough to annoy the melting and leave tiny crunchy bits in my mouth.

Milk chocolate is 32% cocoa product. Like the Feuilletine, the chocolate is too sweet and left an oily film in my mouth. It also had a slightly bitter aftertaste.

Orange is a mix of dark 55% cocoa chocolate with natural orange flavoring. The orange is subtle, not overpowering. But the base chocolate is just not a good example of particle size, texture, and flavor. It had the same problems as the nibs and dark squares.

The best for the last, there was one decent chocolate in the whole box - Pure Origin Sao Tome - 72% cocoa. This variety is good, but does not rescue the rest of the box. At this cocoa level, the chocolate has to be really good; there isn't enough sugar to mask problems. Compared to some of the better high percentage cocoas, this is about the middle of the pack. Melt is pretty good, not perfectly even but not coarse. There is an initial good tart flavor that slowly goes away. The aftertaste is the biggest problem, a kind of dry powder and bitterness left in my mouth.

The molding on all of these chocolates was not good. Every square had bubbles or imperfections on the back of the square. If the chocolate is the correct temperature at molding and tempered properly, the back of a bar will be perfectly smooth.

I was truly expecting a box full of heaven from Leonidas, smooth, sweet, lovely chocolates that I could enjoy slowly. The packaging was beautiful; the contents were just not outstanding. Although not packaged as beautifully, but at the same price point I prefer Valrhona, Cote D'Or, Milka, Lindt, or imported Nestle.