Review: Vanilla Almond Crunch Quest Bar

I have a persistent personal quirk: I'm irresistibly drawn to trying out new food products and flavors. This includes the alluring (think Hawaiian Punch-flavored licorice) as well as the bizarre (miso-flavored soft serve ice cream), and on occasion the downright vile (kimchi-flavored Ramune soda - it's as bad as it sounds). On this week's trip to the Wallowas, I indulged this particular quirk because I'd heard great things about Quest bars and I saw some on sale at the grocery store. I'm allergic to chocolate, which constrains my trail food selections on an ongoing basis (so MANY bars have chocolate!!!!), so I chose a non-cocoa option, the Vanilla Almond Crunch bar. With a tingle of glee and curiosity, I loaded this little mystery into my food stash for the trip and away we went. I was honestly pretty excited - I love trying out new foods on the trail.

We started hiking at 4:20am (I know, I know, wrong 4:20), and I wasn't feeling breakfast at that hour. By the time we hit our camp location around 9:00am though, I was starving. With the anticipation of a little kid rushing to the Christmas tree in the wee hours of December 25th, I pulled out my Quest bar and opened the wrapper.

Rarely have I been served such a crushing culinary disappointment in the backcountry. The texture had the peculiar space-age quality of old school PowerBars, and the chemical stink wafting off the thing might well have triggered an EPA air quality investigation if we still lived in a time when the EPA actually did anything besides deny climate science and fund people's charter jet vacations. But I digress.

The taste is the worst part of this bar. It doesn't start off too badly, but as you chew and swallow, the full flavor hits you, and it's roughly equivalent to licking the rim of a can of acrylic paint. Do what you will with the use of the word "rim" here.

Don't buy this. Seriously. If it had been less than nine miles to the nearest trash can, I wouldn't have finished it. Zero stars, and $2.50 I would rather have chucked in a Dumpster than put in my mouth.