Covered Strawberries at the Poly: From Wow to Why

We stopped by the Kona Island stand at the Polynesian resort at Walt Disney World and ran across a line of chocolate covered strawberries, all priced at $4.00 each (or a Disney dining plan snack credit). Pretty normal treat, right? Well, maybe.

All the strawberries are covered with a layer of chocolate which acts as “glue” to adhere a layer of toppings. We tried three of the options, one with a traditional flavor profile, one that was a little stretch, and one that was a step beyond.

First up was the Oreo Cookie strawberry. This one is not much to look at. Visually it reads as a lump of hard grey shards. But biting into it, you get something tasting in the same ballpark as a standard chocolate covered strawberry. There’s a nice balance between the fruit and chocolate flavor. We’d eat this again.

The other strawberries with relatively traditional flavor profiles include plain milk or white chocolate, chocolate pearl sprinkles, M & Ms, and chocolate sprinkle candies.

The next group includes strawberries covered with chocolate plus another typical dessert item such as nuts or decorative sprinkles. From this group we tried the caramelized nuts version. Both the strawberry and the nut concoction were delicious on their own, but the flavor ratio felt off. There was more so much more of the nut blend, that the strawberry taste got lost. We also found this to be too chewy. You want a chocolate covered strawberry to be succulent, not crunchy.

Other strawberries that are almost good, but have too much of a crunch factor are: roasted almonds, sugar sprinkles, and toasted coconut.

The last strawberry we tried was covered with chocolate (so far so good) and … bacon (why?). The strawberry with the chocolate was good. The bacon with the chocolate was ok-ish, though this bacon had a heavy smoke taste and was a bit on the fatty side. But the combination of the three flavors was too much – like burnt, unctuous fruit. This was a novelty gone very, very wrong. Sometimes less is more.

Would you try any of these strawberries?