But it was delicious. Yes, friends, I ate a hippo… a chocolate hazelnut cream-filled Happy Hippo, to be exact. It caught my attention this past Sunday at m2m, a Korean grocer on the Upper West Side. The hippo just… looked so darn happy. As I stared into its searching eyes, memories emerged of the Hungry Hungry Hippo game I would so enthusiastically play as a child. What fun we had, those hippos and I. Yet, something was oddly dissatisfying about that game. Why’d the hippos get to have all the fun? I was hungry, too, you know. Maybe if I purchased this box… this one box of chocolate cream-filled hippos, I would fill the hungry hungry void in my hungry hungry heart…
Yup. Good idea. As usual. One bite into the luscious hazelnut cream filled center, and I was in Hippo Heaven. The unusual dessert was thought up by Kinder, an Italian chocolate manufacturer that has a weird vendetta against hippopotami. I couldn’t tell you what it was doing on a Korean shop...
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Adam grunted as he moved to the checkout counter, $4 hippos in hand. Happy Valentine’s Day, indeed...
As I opened the individually packaged hippo, I sort of felt bad for the poor thing. For one, it didn’t look happy at all. It was petrified.
I mumbled some sort of apology and crunched through the crispy torso. Wow… for a candy hippopotamus, there were some serious textures going on. From the dense sprinkles to the light and flakey wafer, all leading in to the creamy chocolate ganache center…I was impressed. Then again, I wasn’t expecting much.
I would actually buy these again. They’re unassumingly fantastic. The chocolate quality is pretty good, and the texture is reminiscent of a Lindt truffle. And come on, it’s a chocolate-filled hippo... isn’t that what life is all about?
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