Mayana Chocolate Candy Bars With Culinary Cred

Mayana's sophisticated candy bars

Two weeks ago, we sang the praises of chef-made cookies.

This week, we've found Chicago-made candy bars packed with culinary cred.

They come from Mayana Chocolate, a four-year-old chocolate company run by Daniel Herskovic, a culinary school graduate who worked the line at restaurants in San Francisco, New York and Chicago.

Herskovic began making candy bars in 2011, but only for markets and special occasions. Thousands of bars and rave reviews later, he got the hint: These things should be available every day.

Three varieties are now on market shelves ($7 to $8 each, depending on the retailer). The Space Bar is filled with chewy toasted-almond nougat and a labor-intensive fleur de sel caramel, made with organic cream and requiring a full hour of patient stovetop stirring. The Kitchen Sink is crunchy, salty and savory, with pretzels, caramel, crisped rice and a blend of peanut butter and milk chocolate.

The Fix takes the Twix bar as inspiration, then leaves it in the dust with a base of buttery vanilla-bean shortbread topped with a ripple of that special caramel; all three bars are enrobed in 66-percent-dark chocolate.

See ya, Snickers.

Find Mayana's candy bars at Southport Grocery, Provenance and Urban Orchard in Chicago; at Careful Peach in Oak Park; at Wine Goddess in Evanston; and at Foodstuffs across the North Shore.