Food Note: Coklat Suzanna

Bandung is a capital city of Jawa Barat region (Western Java). At about 700 m above the sea level, this is one cool city that was planned by the Dutch colonial as a resort city. This is also the city where Indonesia's long standing chocolate factory exist, the Ceres - which is widely known as the largest and longest producer of chocolate rice (meses). But we won't discuss more about Ceres or chocolate rice here, as what I want to introduce you about, is the Bandung's original Coklat Suzanna*.

Though the birth of Suzanna can't be separated from Ceres, as the current producer, Ir. Sukandi, was the early Ceres's Direktur Utama (Head Director), before he then manage his own chocolate factory "Abadi", which produced this Coklat Suzanna**.

Coklat Suzanna is a trapezium shaped hard chocolate candy, with bitter sweet dark chocolate on the outing, and brown chewy nut nougat fillings. The combination of bitter sweet firm chocolate indeed goes very well with the sweet nutty creamy chewy fillings, a good balance; so while the chocolate is melt in your mouth, the nougat will still give you a good prolonged enjoyment.

With its composition, no chocolate locally or internationally (that available here in Indonesia), could match the sensation and eating experience Coklat Suzanna can deliver.

I know this beautiful chocolate from when I'm in my early teens, until now I'm in my middle threes. Along the way there's been some degradation in quality, but they seem to have fixed that, and come up with the new design also; the original ones has only simple paper belt on top of the silvery wrap, with the word "Suzanna" in mixed primary colors. Only recently its got some style and classy wrap.

 

Notice the nougat filling? Have I mentioned that it's chewy good? :)
At the downside though, this breed is rare to find. Though not as tough as some years ago, currently you can only find it around Bandung, and Jakarta at most. And in big supermarkets only. Price is dead cheap, as for this kind of goodness you need only spend about 3K (about 3 pcs for 1 US$).

Interested? Well at this moment international flight to Bandung is only served by Air Asia which left from Malaysia, but due to its close distance from Jakarta, it's one of the tourist favorite weekend destination; especially for its culinary richness, and the dead cheap branded clothes in the booming Factory Outlet stores. From Bali there's also regular flight served by Air Asia Indonesia and Merpati, with ticket ranged between 360K to 600K depends on the season. (bay)

*due to a confusing typography, some people calls this "Coklat Zuzanna" instead; though from the printed product name you can see that there's different facing among the first and the second "z", which makes the first "z" more closely resembles as "s"; not to mention that "Suzanna" refers to a common people name, while "Zuzanna" is considered faulty by most spell checker apps. Haven't ask the creator to find out which one is right though.

**data gathered by Sogi -- http://sisogi.multiply.com/photos/album/31, member of the most successful live sitcom show in Indonesia, Extravaganza, who used to be a radio DJ, which also happens to be a close friend of my sister from the high school.