Twix Fino: the verdict

A small percentage of my readers, I'd estimate about seven of you, may have noticed that there is a new chocolate bar adorning the shelves of UK newsagents and other sweet emporia. Initially I believed that the Twix Fino was marketing itself as a lighter alternative to Twixes, and indeed, it may have less calories than its Unfino brother, but having now tasted one, I believe the difference is to do with class. How very British.

The noise as my experimental Fino hits the floor of the vending machine instantly prepares me for disappointment - the thud is not nearly as loud as that for a normal Twix, and in the hunger stakes, loud clatter of item against metal floor = good, soft = less weighty and thus bad.

I canter back to my desk with a glass of milk, and tear open the wrapper. The two fingers are still identifiable as belonging to the Twix family but are, I would wager, more flat. I am girding myself for disappointment. I am expecting something akin to the devil's snack, the Kinder Bueno, all wafer and cream and sickly pointlessness. But I bite in and reality is joyous: a multilayered wafer, less sugary Kit-Kat and more classy, almost treacley, like the straw-shaped wafers that sometimes come with posh ice-cream. And then there's a layer of caramel and the outer coating of chocolate.

The fingers are gone in a quark - so fast that, a moment later, I look down at the packet for the second finger and realise with some shock that I had already eaten it. The Fino is many things, but filling is not one of them. For this reason, I do not believe it can realistically be classified as a chocolate bar. I would say that it is a wonderful biscuit, but any normal person will require at least six or seven fingers to feel as though they have actually eaten anything more substantial than a serendipitous morsel of food discovered wedged in one's upper molar.