Sweeter memories of KitKats (From York Press)

Sweeter memories of KitKats

10:10am Thursday 30th December 2010 in Letters By Reader's letter

What on earth have Nestlés done to Rowntree’s Kit-Kat?

I was at my daughter’s house on Christmas Day and, before having our Christmas dinner, we were all having a yarn and enjoying a cup of coffee.

“Kit-Kat Dad?”queried my daughter and, not having had one for some considerable time, I gladly accepted.

I opened the wrapper and initially thought the Kit-Kat I had been given was one of the “plain chocolate” variety, such was the very dark colour of the chocolate.

The colouring may have been acceptable – if the “milk” chocolate had actually tasted of milk chocolate.

Unfortunately it had quite a bitter taste and, to my palate anyway, bore no resemblance to the wonderfully creamy Rowntree chocolate covering the last Kit-Kat I’d eaten.

This took my mind back the late 1980s. I was working at Rowntree’s as a refrigeration contractor on the day it was announced Nestlé had bought out the company, and I well remember one of the long-term fitters coming in and saying: “Mark my words, now that Nestlé have taken over that’s the end of Rowntree’s.”

I thought he was being melodramatic, but here we are, 30 years later, with the birth-place of “Rowntree’s of York” being largely razed to the ground and one of their best products looking and, more importantly, tasting nothing like the Kit-Kat of days gone by.

Phil Roe, Roman Avenue South, Stamford Bridge.