Organic Avenue: featuring Gnosis, Hail Merry, and Keen-Wah Decadence

You may have noticed I have recently been posting a lot of vegan items.  That's because I spent a whole month vegan.  During that month, I stopped by Organic Avenue, which seems to be some sort of high-end, pre-made juice bar, with lots of salads and other "organic," vegan items.  And lots of chocolate.  I got something lame for food, but I also got some chocolate:

I got some sort of flourless, chocolate, mint tart from Hail Merry and some sort of chocolate protein bar from Keen-Wah Decadence.  I quick examination of the interiors will tell you which was better:

The Hail Merry tart was great.  I have previously had their chocolate macaroons, which are also great, even though I don't like macaroons.  On the contrary, the Keen-Wah Decadence bar was just gross.  I took a few bites, then threw it out.  I never throw out chocolate.  But it was definitely the Hail Merry tart that was the decadent chocolate item.

I also got a little, bite-sized piece of Gnosis 70% dark chocolate:

Gnosis is another one of those raw, organic, agave-and-coconut-using brands that I wish I hated more than I do.  The square was actually quite good.  It will never be able to hold its own against the great bars out there that actually roast their beans and use real sugar, but still, this was pretty delicious.

Bottom Line: I am finding these "aggregator" stores, on the Dean & Deluca model, are actually pretty good places to try a variety of chocolate items.  We had the Manhattan Espresso Cafe, we had Treehaus, and now we have Organic Avenue.  Among the items, I highly recommend Hail Merry.

My Mom's Flourless Chocolate Cake

So my mom makes a flourless chocolate cake.  A parve flourless chocolate cake.  And it is seriously among the world's greatest chocolate products.  When photographed by a terrible photographer using the world's worst camera phone, it looks like this:

The recipe can be found here.  Now the secret is out.

One time I tried to make a vegan version of this cake for a friend.  Instead of eggs, I tried using flax and water.  Smart idea.  What I didn't know was that to use that combination to replace eggs, the two must be very vigorously stirred together until they form an egg-like consistency.  So instead I half-heartedly stirred them and threw them into the mix.

So anyways, that is a story about how I boiled a cake.

Bottom Line: I don't even try to bake anymore.  But you should, using this recipe.

Extraordinary Desserts, San Diego

So I came from San Francisco and New York, two of the world's greatest chocolate cities, to San Diego, a city not known for its chocolate at all.  My friend Nick took me to Extraordinary Desserts, saying that it was one of the best places in San Diego.  I wanted dessert, but I was not expecting much.

WOW.  Chocolate croissant bread pudding.  Who would've thought?  You guys.  It was incredible.  I can't even explain.  It was so good, I ordered a slice of the "Au Chocolat" flourless chocolate cake to-go:

Even eaten later, out of a to-go box, it was delicious.  Just look at that -- you can't go wrong.

Bottom Line: Do not underestimate the less famous chocolate cities!  There are gems everywhere!

Meme

Meme is a delicious mediterranean and tapas restaurant. Its name is not pronounced like the word we use to describe "Gangam Style" and the Double Rainbow guy. It's pronounced like May May. Only I don't know how to create accents over the "e"s.

This is Meme's chocolate lava cake:

It was just right: kind of crispy on the outside, melty on the inside, chocolatey throughout.

BOTTOM LINE: You should get dinner at Meme. And if you're there, and if you're still hungry, you should conclude your dinner with this dessert.

Supper's Flourless Chocolate Cake

On Saturday I went to my friend Lisa's bachelorette party. She wore a pink sash that said "bride-to-be" and we all wore pink beaded necklaces and shouted "Woooo!" a lot. I felt like we were in a movie about young women in New York City. Very exciting.

For dinner, we went to Supper. I'd never been before, but I'd been to its sister restaurants, Frank and Lil' Frankie's, both of which I love. Supper followed in its sisters' footsteps of excellence. The caprese salad was so good! The gnocchi, oh my Lord!

Anyway. This is not an entrees blog. This is a chocolate blog. Keep it together, Leila.

The menu was prix fixe, so my friend Leslie and I tried to guess what the dessert would be, based solely on the main courses we'd been given. I guessed flourless chocolate cake. She guessed tiramisu. We were both right.

That third thing was a hazelnut something. Creamy. Very good, considering that it wasn't chocolate.

Let me level with you: the flourless chocolate cake on this plate was not good. It was room temperature and dry. I wouldn't have known it was flourless if the waiter hadn't told me. It didn't have that appropriate fudgy quality.

That said, I would give this place the benefit of the doubt. Here is why:

1) I was overly full of gnocchi and caprese salad and lemon-parmeasan pasta and so on, so it's possible nothing would have tasted delicious to me at that point.

2) It's hard to create the most excellent food when dealing with a prix fixe menu for a table of ten. Going there with just a friend and ordering off the menu might yield a different quality.

3) The chocolate sauce on this plate was deeply delicious, so clearly this place is capable of creating excellent chocolate things.

BOTTOM LINE: A disappointing chocolate experience at the end of an otherwise fantastic dinner.

Maison Kayser

Stop two on Angel and my chocolate quest was Maison Kayser -- the first NYC outpost of a major Paris chain.  We should have just come here -- it was great.  Unfortunately, I was pretty full from the previous mediocre experience, so I probably didn't get a full appreciation of all that Maison Kayser had to offer.  But it should be noted that not only do they have a great selection of chocolatey and other baked wares, but they also have an appealing regular food menu.

We ordered a chocolate mousse, a chocolate madeleine, and a cake with a very complicated name that shed little light as to what it was like.

This cake had a name.

That cake was a highlight.  For some reason we assumed it would come out hot, but it was cold.  No matter.  Very chocolatey, very delicious.

Next up was the mousse.  I liked it, but Angel liked it more, noting the high quality and feeling it compared well to other mousses in the city.  I think the chocolatey thingies on top had more appeal to her.  To me they just sort of interfered with the texture and didn't add much chocolate flavor.

I feel like that paragraph came out a bit too negative on my part.  The mousse was very good.  Really.

Finally, we had a chocolate madeleine.  But we did not get a picture of it, because Angel's camera died.  I should probably point out that I might not be qualified to review this madeleine, as I'm not sure I've ever had a madeleine before.  In any case, I immediately declared that it was not chocolatey enough.  "What are you talking about??" demanded Angel. "This is almost like a brownie!!"  "But then," I responded, "why did we not just get a brownie?"  So there you have it: very chocolatey for a madeleine, but maybe you should just get a brownie.

Bottom Line: I can see why this is a successful chain in Paris.  It is a successful chain in Paris, because it is really good at various different things.

This Thing I Bought At Whole Foods

I bought this at Whole Foods:

I think it was called a Mississippi Mud Pie Bar or something.  I might have made up any of those four words, but at least a couple of those words were involved.  The point was it was gooey and chocolatey and delicious.

Bottom Line: Gooey and chocolatey and delicious.