Something that I noticed is that a lot of the assorted candies were chocolate-based sweets and had some sort of crunchy element within a praline-like center. The crunch came from nuts or wafer bits. One of the wrapped sweets that we tried tasted like a caramel fudge bar. It was sticky and sweet like caramel, but its texture was much more crumbly than chewy which is not what I am used to. We tried two different flavored hard candies (think Jolly Rancher-style): one was pear and the other was barberry. Both had the same texture as one would expect in hard candy, but I’ve never tasted something barberry-flavored since it isn’t common in the U.S. Barberry is a common flavor in Russia as the shrub is able to thrive in the cold climate. I really enjoyed the barberry hard candies. They tasted like cherry cough syrup, but not quite as sweet and sickly. It had a tang to it that offset its sweetness and reminded me of a cranberry flavor.

Overall, I love anything chocolate and the nutty, crunchy surprises in all of the chocolate candies were up my alley. I don’t love American hard candy because they’re usually too sweet for me, but the barberry flavor took me by surprise and I found myself reaching for those candies most often.