flea at laff #13: madécasse/dosa royal.

snack: madécasse pink pepper & citrus chocolate bar
drink: dosa royal mango lassai

oh hey! what do ya know? the brooklyn flea is back! although i severely neglected it last summer, this summer i've sworn to give it a lot more love. it's like...in the summer of 2010 i gave it its own column & shizz. then in 2011, while i made it to the flea a bunch, i only documented three of my trips. thing was, there came a point where i'd eaten my way through most of the food vendors & there wasn't all that much in terms of new stuff. luckily, this year there are a number of new booths in the mix. bon chovie...after being spurned from your anchovy-based delights twice at the smorgasburg last year, i will not be spurned again this summer. take notice.

...so while i missed the flea last week, i did make it out two weeks ago for the opening weekend. my oft-mentioned, oft-flea companion jessica came along & lived life large with a red hook lobster pound connecticut roll & milk truck chocolate milkshake combo. as for my diet that afternoon, when given the option between eating a snack featuring nutritional substance & filling my stomach with candy, as always, candy-filled stomach emerges victorious.

as such, while jessica waited in multiple lines for her food & drink, i roamed around & scoped out the 2012 scene, eventually stopping at the booth for madécasse, who were distributing chocolate bars. they don't just get their cocoa from africa like all those other pussies. they friggin make their chocolate bars IN madagascar. they produce the WHOLE DAMN THING on an island that's fun to occupy in RISK! by keeping production in the country once they've finished picking the cocoa beans, they pump way more money into the local economy. it's pretty cool & that's not even counting the fact that while these folks are crafting gourmet chocolate bars & building an economy, there are probably DOZENS of ring-tailed lemurs dancing about the grounds of the chocolate factory to a disneyesque oompah loompah groove.

don't let the soothing rhythms of the ring-tailed lemur boogie distract you from the real issue though! economics is where it's at. madécasse sells three of their mini 0.88 oz bars for $10 or a bar three times that size for $6. after trying to navigate our volatile u.s. economy & be cheap & just get a single one of the tiny ones & being denied, i got a single big version of their pink pepper & citrus chocolate bar. the dark chocolate is rich & clean and when combined with the flavors of the pink pepper & combava fruit (the citrus), it makes for a delicious chocolate bar with sweet & peppery notes. no complaints here. i'll definitely be trying their other flavors in the near future.

as for my afternoon drink, two spots down there was a booth for both dosa royal & valdet's masala chai, who, respectively, offer up dosas & chai. chai's for suckas, so i opted for the mango lassai (sic?). with its mango & yogurt, it at least has some semblance of nutrition going for it. both are TOTALLY part of a balanced meal! unfortunately, i'm someone who gets easily skeeved out by beverages with strange textures (see: bubble tea) & the mango lassai fit square into that category.

while it had little bits of mango & spices floating amongst its yogurt creaminess, the flavor wasn't overwhelmingly fruity or sweet & was actually pretty good. overall, it was rather refreshing but i struggled to make it to the bottom of the drink, as the floaty bits started to gross me out after a while. for anyone without my textural aversions, it's probably a heck of a drink. i can't bring myself to get it again though.