Nestle Chokella

Working 9-5; what a way to make a living. Occasionally my mind wonders elsewhere, usually to the heady days of summer when there were no time constrictions placed upon my daily habits and my most important query was whether or not Dolly sung live. At 7am, when faced with another day in my glamourous Parisian life of making PowerPoint Presentations about the major competition in the packaging world, sometimes it’s only the prospect of trying a new cereal that can really motivate me to embark upon another day.

Dare I say it, but In France, cereal has one major competitor each morning, Nutella. Therefore when I found Chokella, a chocolate-hazelnut flavoured cereal, you can imagine my delight. A cereal combing my two favourite breakfast foods; it would be insane to not try this. Chokella has the distinctive hazelnut smell of Nutella, but unfortunately smells a lot more flavoursome than it tastes so I was a little disappointed when my first spoonful didn’t quite meet my expectations, it isn’t an unpleasant flavour, it could just benefit from being a little more powerful. On a more positive note, the cereal per-se is in the shape of mini toasts, a novelty that is still exciting, even at the age of 20. However, unlike toast, it keeps it’s crunch upon impact with milk, and takes a good 15 minutes to go soggy. And for those of you who don’t like cereal flavoured milk, this is the cereal for you. Despite my own previous beliefs, the milk retains its milk flavour once you have finished the cereal. Chokella is closest you will ever get to a cereal version of Nutella on toast, but is it the perfect breakfast cereal? That’s hard to say.

Here are my ratings for Chokella:


Crunch Factor: 4.5/5


Flavour: 3/5


Aesthetics: 4.5/5


Filling: 3.5/5


Overall Rating: 3.8/5

Miel Pops – Cœur à la Noisette

Hello cereal fans, or should I say ‘bonjour céréale fans’. I am so sorry that I have neglected you for so long but I have been rather busy trying to forge my new life in France and stumble my way around the French supermarkets in search of the cereal aisle and decent milk! Having lived off a mixture of croissants, Nutella and baguette every morning for the past 2 weeks, I was really craving some cereal and was therefore delighted when in Franprix, after about 5 minutes of broken ‘franglais’ on my part, and several looks of incomprehension and bemusement on behalf of the employees, I was finally shown to the aforementioned sacred aisle.

Faced with a choice of cereals from all over the globe, all that I knew was that I wanted to try something French and it was this desire that spurred my decision to pick Miel Pops – Coeur à la Noisette, translated as Honey Pops with a Hazelnut Heart. This description makes the cereal seem rather lovely, almost as if after a bowl all your worries will just melt away. I wouldn’t say that all my worries have completely disappeared; this is a breakfast cereal and not a psychiatrist or magic genie, but while tucking into my breakfast at 6:30 in the morning I felt unusually chirpy for that hour. Perhaps it was just the temporary euphoria one experiences when trying a new cereal for the first time, or perhaps it was due to the wonderful mélange of honey and hazelnut in the same bowl and the sunshine yellow colour of the cereal per se. However, after about four or five spoonful’s, this very sweet cereal begins to get a little sickly. On the plus side, the longer the cereal stays in the milk, the softer the hazelnut centre becomes but the outer shell keeps its crunch, c’est formidable!!! A final note is that despite the sweetness of the cereal the milk remains milk tasting, an added bonus for those who don’t like their milk tainted by other flavours.

Here are my ratings for Miel Pops – Cœur à la Noisette:

Crunch Factor: 4/5


Flavour: 3/5


Aesthetics: 3.5/5


Filling: 4/5


Overall Rating: 3.5/5