Macaron Day round-up

Thursday was NYC Macaron Day, which is an annual day of amazement and wonder when you can walk around the city and get free macarons from participating bakeries. I took my lunch break to hit up the West Village stops.

First up was Francois Payard, which is the originator of the amazingness of Macaron Day. I got a chocolate macaron and it was so, so awesome. Perfect texture, flavor, everything.





I would have eaten about a zillion more. Fortunately, there were two more stops on my walk.

Next up was Mille-Feuille Bakery Cafe. They weren't offering chocolate macarons when I was there, only caramel. But even the caramel was delightful, despite its handicap of not being chocolate. They also had other appealing-looking chocolate baked goods on display. I would go back.

Third stop was bisous, ciao, which you know is going to be good because they only sell macarons. They had more than a dozen flavors, though not all were available for the free sample.



The one I got was blood orange with a dark chocolate cream in the middle. Phenomenal. So flavorful. I would go back here, too, and try more of their many flavors, like the peppermint dark chocolate one, which sounds like it's designed for me.



BOTTOM LINE: Macarons are expensive. So it's really nice to have a day when you can eat them for free.

L.A. Burdick

After Leila visited L.A. Burdick in Boston, it stoked my memory, and Angel and I went to L.A. Burdick in Flatiron.  I had not been in about 4 years.  (Which of course has not stopped me from expressing opinions.)  Of course this meant we needed to buy one of everything:

LA Burdick is especially known for its selection of single-origin hot chocolates.  When I went four years ago, I got a sampler of hot chocolates and... a lot of other things.  Here is the email I sent to Leila and Angel immediately after getting home:

LA Burdick has not great bon bons and chocolate mousse, BUT it has a really interesting hot chocolate situation.  they have 6 different single origin hot chocolates.  the madagascar, ecuador, and venezuela were GREAT.  the bolivia, dominican republic, and grenada were not good.  the first three were, like, around vosges-level good.  which is really good.

Yes, we have been serious about this stuff for many years now.

In any case, my previous suspicions were confirmed on my return.  The bon bons were nothing special.  The cake was a disaster -- there was some fruit situation hidden sparsely inside.  The macaron was adequate.

But the hot chocolates were great.  We got Madagascar and Venezuela, having pulled up my old email (though a few of the flavors had changed).  I of course preferred the Venezuela.  Angel preferred the Madagascar.  But, in any case, two satisfied customers.

We also got two chocolate bars:

They were clearly crafted with love:

And in fact they may have been the highlight of the whole stop.  Both bars were excellent.  I had never seen this before, but they had a percentage range -- 69%-72% and 70%-72%.  Not that much of a range, but still.  The former was a blended origin with nibs and the latter was a simple Venezuela origin.  Both were delicious, and both were devoured within a few minutes.

Bottom Line: If you keep it simple here, you will do very well.  Just don't get carried away.  In other words, don't be us.

Istanbul

On my way home from Nairobi, I spent a day in Istanbul.  And, obviously, by "a day in Istanbul," I mean "a day in Istanbul eating chocolate.

Take Off:


As soon as I landed in the airport, I got some Turkish ice cream from "Take Off."  This was definitely extremely authentic, you guys.  I am pretty sure everyone in Turkey eats Take Off ice cream for dessert at home every day.

Anyways, I think this is supposed to be sorta chewier than regular ice cream?  I mostly ate it to calm down, after realizing that the first stamp in my passport is from Israel, and maybe that won't go over too well with the border guards.  Little did I know that the Turkish passport control could not possibly have cared less.  All they wanted was $20.

Gold Chocolate:

So I arrived.  I did some touristy stuff.  But my first chocolate shop was Gold.  They had some serviceable bon bons.  And they had a bar of 61.5% dark chocolate that Leila and I ate as part of a Turkish Taste Test. I ranked it third of five, and Leila ranked it last.  We agreed that it was chocolate and therefore good.  But we also agreed that next to the other options in front of us, it failed to impress.  It was a bit floral.  Leila does not like floral, but I do.

This was not the only thing that was Gold in Istanbul:

Mabel Chocolate:

Next stop was Mabel.  Fortunately, I bought just a bar, because it was not good.  It had a weird astringency, it had an after taste that we charitably described as "not nice," and it was too sweet.  Leila ranked it fourth, and I ranked it last.

Haci Bekir:

I decided to shake things up and buy some Turkish delight from the famous Haci Bekir.  Chocolate-covered Turkish delight, OBVIOUSLY:

So I tore into some chocolate-covered, mint-flavored Turkish delight while taking a ferry to Asia.  It was almost lunch time, and I had only been on two continents so far that day.  Need to step up my game:

so many birds

So here's the thing about this Turkish delight.  It was delicious.  But by the time I was almost ready to put them down, they made me SUPER ill.  It was a very m&m-like experience.  True to form, these were made from about 98% artificial ingredients.

They also had some plain chocolates (adequate) and non-mint flavored, chocolate-covered Turkish delight (slightly more delicious and slightly less sickening).

Baylan:

As far as I can tell, Baylan is the most  famous chocolate/sweets place on the Asian side of Istanbul.  And indeed it had a lot going for it.  The macaron was completely adequate, and the milk chocolate bonbon was good.

The bar was polarizing.  They told me it was plain dark chocolate, and that was a lie.  It had pistachios in it.  Leila loved it, pronouncing it her favorite of the five bars.  It ranked fourth for me, solely because of the pistachios.  The chocolate was of good quality.

Kahve Dunyasi:

I then proceeded to get myself extremely lost.  I think I took 4 different ferries, all of them were wrong.  But I finally found my way to a Kahve Dunyasi.  This seems to be the Turkish equivalent to Starbucks, if Starbucks were equally about coffee and chocolate.  I liked the hot chocolate there about as much as I do at Starbucks -- meaning that it is surprisingly good for what it is, but it still is what it is.  Leila might like Starbucks better than I do.

But their bar was excellent!  It was far from artisanal -- it use vanillin rather than vanilla, for example.  But it was a super rich 56%.  There was a slight hint of coffee, but it was mostly just very chocolatey.  I ranked it first of five, and Leila ranked it second.

Gezi:

I made my way from Kahve Dunyasi to the Taksim area, intending to stop by M Chocolate at the Marmara Taksim, but I ran into Gezi about a block away.  If this had been Paris, I would have kept my eyes on the prize, but I have had some fortuitous, random chocolate stops, and this was among them:

I got a milk chocolate bonbon and a marzipan bonbon, and both were excellent.  Two of the best bonbons of the trip!  

M Chocolate, Marmara Taksim:

The only ones that could compete were those at M.  Now, M is a different beast from every other chocolate shop in Istanbul.  This place is fancy by French standards.  It's in a hotel lobby.  There are lots of gloves involved.  And yes, those gloves are white.

picture not taken at the place of purchase

Both the honey bonbon and the hazelnut bonbon were excellent.  I also got their 61.5% bar (a popular percentage in Istanbul apparently?), with nibs.  The nibs added a nice flavor and texture.  The bar was good, but no better than, say, the store-bought Scharfen Berger bar with nibs.  It was my second favorite bar and Leila's third favorite.

Karakoy Gulluoglu:

Gulluoglu is a famous baklava chain in Istanbul subject to some sort of family feud.  Everyone told me I needed to try it, but apparently it's a big enough chain that there is a branch a couple blocks from my office in NYC, so I didn't sweat it.  But I met up with my local friend Aycan -- who wound up being an unsurprisingly wonderful host -- and she took me here afterwards.  This was apparently to the original location?  Or maybe just the only one not subject to the family feud?  I dunno.  I do know it was delicious.  They even had chocolate baklava!  Yes yes yes.  Unfortunately, my phone was too dead to take any photos.

Vakko Chocolate:

I had heard about Vakko Chocolate, but they didn't seem to have a centrally located shop.  What good fortune finding some at the airport on the way home!:

Well, sort of.  It was fine, but nothing special.

Divan:

The biggest tragedy of my trip had been that, because I took so many wrong ferries, I had arrived at Divan right after it closed.  It looked really great, too.  But fortune was smiling upon me, because they were sold at the airport too!:

These were good -- definitely better than the Vakko -- but somehow I felt that it would have been better fresh in the store.  It was nice having some milk chocolate, though, in the face of all the mediocre dark chocolate bars.

Bottom Line: Istanbul is technically in Europe (mostly), but do not expect Parisian quality.  That said, there are a ton of locally made chocolate products, so it is a great city to explore.

Belgium #4

Alright, guys.  We're almost out of Europe.  I know, it's been an ordeal.  Who needs their socialist chocolate, anyways?

(I do.)

ANTWERP:

  

Del Ray:

I got off the train from Bruges and landed back in Antwerp.  I was short on time, so I hightailed it to Del Ray, the top recommendation of basically everyone.

I got a chocolate cake thing.  It was incredible.  The second best of the trip, after Peclard's.  I got a chocolate macaron that was totally up to Parisian standards.  I got a good, but not great, truffle.  And I ordered a dark chocolate bonbon, but they gave me a hazelnut one, and it was still pretty good.

I also got a pack of five origin chocolate bars, which I ate with Leila upon my return:

That review is forthcoming.

Overall, Del Ray was probably my favorite in Antwerp, but as a patisserie more than as a chocolatier.

Burie:

I walked around for a bit, looking for Chocolatier Burie.  I found two stores right next to each other -- Chocolatier Burie and Confiserie Burie.  To this day I'm not sure whether this was a Dumon situation or whether the two were related.  If they were related, they were set up very differently.  The confiserie was basically a candy shop.  They sold lots of bars of Cafetasse-brand chocolate.  I bought some milk chocolate and dark chocolate hands.  The milk was better -- it reminded me of the European chocolate my family would bring back for me as a kid.  The dark chocolate was good too, but a bit brittle -- it reminded me of the chocolate at Stef's.  I also got a dark truffle, which was okay and a milk truffle, which was not great.

Chocolatier Burie looked like a much more serious... chocolatier.  I bought a 73% bonbon, and it was excellent.  The best bonbon I got in Antwerp, near the level of Dumon in Bruges.

I also bought a bar from each of the two places:

From L to R: Chocolatier Burie, Confiserie Burie, Chocolate Line (from Bruges)

I liked the bar from Chocolatier Burie better than the bar from Confiserie Burie, though this was far from consensus.  The Chocolatier bar was more serious, definitely legit, and way better than even the one from the Real Dumon.  The other was sweeter, which made it relatively popular.  It was definitely not bad.

Chateau Blanc:

I raced to make it to Chateau Blanc before it closed.  I did not succeed.  But they had a stall still open at a nearby market/carnival, so I went by and sampled some truffles.  The dark chocolate truffle was only okay, but the heavily-dusted Cacao Truffle was truly excellent.  The best I'd had since Brussels.

Paster Snack:

After doing the Antwerp Circuit, I met up with my cousins.  They, as I've mentioned, are chassidic, so we rolled into an extremely kosher pizza place and ordered chocolate cake and ice cream.  There was a lot of hubbub.  I am still not entirely sure what was going on.  About an hour and a half later, one of their employees comes in the door with a container of ice cream.  We think they ran out to the store to buy some?  Anyways, the ice cream was not important.  The cake was actually surprisingly good, given that I had just eaten twelve million pounds of chocolate, plus dinner.  It just confirms Our Favorite Commenter Veronica's point that it's the kosher parve stuff that's not so good -- when milk is allowed, kosher desserts are fine.

Cousins:

But my cousins were far-from-finished.  They loaded me up with kosher Belgian chocolate for the road.  Along with a seriously adorable note made by their children:

But if we ever wanted evidence of Veronica's point, this is it.  Actually, the best stuff they gave me here was the white chocolate -- and I have never said that before in my life.  Particularly the white chocolate with the milk chocolate/hazelnut filling.  That was just amazing.  But even the plain white bar was great.

The dark pieces were ok, but they had lost their tempter, were very sweet, were brittle and dry, and were not the highest quality.  Of course my friend Annie loved them.  Even the dark chocolate filled with dark chocolate/hazelnut filling was not so good... way worse than the white chocolate, and dry.  Parve strikes.

You may actually notice some milk chocolate there.  I don't know what it tasted like, because it got eaten along with the gelt.

I was also given some Mazel Tov-brand chocolate ruggelach, which was also parve and also not good.  Or chocolatey at all.  It tasted like regular bread.  Which I guess isn't so bad, now that I think about it, but it's not chocolate.

But I don't want to get down on the stuff I was given, because that is seriously some of the best white chocolate I've ever had.  A new discovery!

Bottom Line: Taking all the cities in Belgium together might not get you the sheer quantity of ridiculously high quality chocolate that you have in Paris alone, but it's Bruges and Antwerp that just really cannot begin to compare.  Brussels is actually pulling its weight nicely.  So, my review of Belgium: worth a trip, if you're already in Europe.

Belgium #2

Ok, where was I?  Oh, right, Europe.

Pierre Marcolini:

So I stopped by the home base of Pierre Marcolini.  Instead of getting a bar, I got macarons and bonbons.

The grand cru macaron was excellent -- rich and chocolatey -- but slightly too crusty texture-wise.  The regular chocolate macaron tasted a little like candy in comparison.  It had too high of an outside-of-the-macaron-to-inside-of-the-macaron ratio.  This is a common problem for macarons, for me, because the inside is inevitably richer.  Anyways.  It was still really good.  If you offered me one, I would eat it.

Then I got 7 grand cru, single-origin bonbons.  Like you do.  (You do do that, right?  Good.)  Anyways, I started with the Pierre Marcolini Grand Cru Bonbon, which tasted a lot like the Venezuela Grand Cru Bonbon, which tasted exactly like you'd expect a Venezuela Grand Cru Bonbon to taste -- delicious.  The Ecuador was fruitier than expected, with a coffee finish.  That is what my notes say, at least, but that sounds pretentious even for me.  I called the Madagascar one "raison-y," but that's just because that's probably what I expected it to taste like.  The Brazil was fruitier than the Ecuador bonbon, and then one of the two unmarked bonbons was fruitier still.  The last bonbon, unmarked, was relatively nondescript.  

I didn't get pictures of any of the Marcolini stuff I got in Belgium, but here's a picture of the bar I got in Paris but forgot to upload with that post:

In summary: a decent use of my stomach space.  Marcolini obviously has his reputation for a reason -- his chocolates are high quality, complex, and varied.  The bonbons really did taste notably different.  That said, while I enjoyed it all, he was far from my favorite chocolatier in Brussels.

Planete Chocolat:

Next stop was Planete Chocolat.  The Chocolate Planet.  To answer question, yes, they do make you wear a space suit for the duration of your visit.

No they don't.

I lied to you.

I apologize.

Why would I even do that?

So here are the things I bought (minus a dark chocolate bonbon):

The bonbon was excellent and rich, surpassing probably all of Marcolini's offerings.  

I purchased two chocolate bars: a 100% bar and a speculoos bar.  For those of you who don't know speculoos... you've got problems.  I'm not even going to tell you, because you might buy the last jar at Trader Joe's, and then they'll be sold out for a month again.  Anyways, the speculoos bar was amazing.  Obviously.  It was probably the best flavored bar I had all trip.  The 100% bar... wasn't.  By that I mean it wasn't 100%, despite being clearly marked "100%."  It was probably something like 85%?  It wasn't sweet, but it was definitely not 100%.  Perfectly good, though.

I got a box of hazelnut shells, because I secretly love Guylian-brand chocolate seashells more than anything, and these looked similar.  And, to my complete lack of surprise, they were!  In fact, they were near-identical.  On the one hand, that speaks very well of these, because I totally love Guylian.  On the other hand, it speaks very well of Guylian, because they are mass producing world-famous-artisanal-chocolate-hazelnut-shells-quality chocolate-hazelnut-shells.

And then I got that bag of cocoa beans.  Now here's the thing.  The first few times I ate them, it sort of triggered a gag reflex.  But it was still delicious.  I don't know how that's possible.  In any case, I got over that, and now they are regular delicious, and they are sitting on my desk at work.  Since writing this, I've reached over about 5 time to eat one, but then I realized it was Ta'anit Ester.  I'm breaking the fast this year with City Bakery's Darkest Dark Chocolate Hot Chocolate.  Last time I tried to get it, it was sold out, and I almost broke down in public.  Wish me luck!  (Ok, this took a little longer than I expected to post.  End result: success.)

Tourist Shop:

My next stop... was a tourist shop. 

I walked past about one hundred tourist shops selling chocolate, but this one sold Dolfin-brand chocolate, and that is important.  I tried Dolfin's 88% bar when I was in Boston with Kasey a year or two ago, and I thought it was the bee's knees.  Actually, the bees' knees.  The knees of every bee.  There was no bee knee that it wasn't.

Anyways.

I wound up going overboard:

They gave me a speculoos-almond-chocolate mini-pile to taste.  It was surprisingly excellent.

I then bought a bunch of bars from Dolfin, from Zaabar (a Brussels-based chocolatier that I did not have time to visit directly), and from the store itself.  

The store's bar was actually quite good.  It was straight up decent milk chocolate.

The Zaabar mint bar and Dolfin mint bar were reviewed as part of Leila and my tasting on my return -- so you will see the results shortly.  

But the Zaabar dark chocolate was quite good.  It was very rich, but very sweet and fairly candy-like.  I didn't like it as much as some of my friends, even ones who like high percentage chocolate.  If I had to give it flavor notes, I would say nutty and cinnamo-yn.  My friend Josh thought it tasted of spices.

The Dolfin dark chocolate bar, though, was spectacular.  It was just as good as I remembered it.  Not only did it blow me away (again), but it equally impressed a big group of people who are not high-percentage fans.

I also tried two different Dolfin milk chocolate bars.  Both were quite good -- similar, with different percentage cacao -- but neither stood out the way the 88% did.

Mary:

So the next stop was Mary.  I was really excited about Mary from my San Francisco stop.  After having been to most of the best chocolate shops in the world since, I wondered if my standards had changed any.  I had a feeling I wouldn't be when I realized they had 7 different pure chocolate bonbons, without even getting into origins.  I bought all 7.  Plus a dark chocolate truffle.  Plus a gianduja bonbon (because why not).  ... Plus a bar.

So four of the bonbons were called "Lady," and they had a Lady printed on them.  They were four different gradients of dark.  One of them was the one I had in SF.  The darkest one was immediately possibly the best bonbon I'd ever had.  It wasn't even sweet at all.  I'd never had a bonbon that wasn't sweet before.  Next was the dark chocolate bonbon, which I suspect is what I had in SF, because it was basically the platonic ideal of a dark chocolate bonbon.  The milk chocolate bonbon was unsurprisingly the platonic ideal of a milk chocolate bonbon.  The last one was of a certain, very creamy style that is not for me.  It is featured quite prominently in chocolate from Bruges -- as you will soon see.  But basically they upped the cream to chocolate ratio beyond my tolerance.  Still, it was better than any of the Bruges-based versions of this that I had.

I also bought two mousse bonbons -- a dark chocolate mousse coated in white chocolate.  Amazing.  Then an extra dark chocolate mousse coated in milk chocolate.  Even better!  I find mouse bonbons usually not to be as good as regular ganache bonbons, but these beat just about any ganache bonbon I'd ever had not from Mary.

Even the Gianduja bonbon and milk chocolate bonbon were amazing.

Finally, I had the dark chocolate truffle again, and I was again blown away.  I knew it was between that and Chapon for best on the trip.  Upon returning home with a larger supply and sampling more of each, I decided that Mary did indeed make my favorite truffle.  It was less the platonic ideal of a truffle -- the cocoa powder coating was less intense than Chapon's, and the inside was fudgier than it was creamy.  And it was definitely sweeter than Chapon's.  But it was just so intense and chocolatey that I was totally sold

That said, I purchased a bar (probably 70something percent), and while it was good, it did not stand out among the many amazing bars I purchased.  Accordingly, I will pronounce Mary my favorite in the world for bonbons, but perhaps the overall prize will rest with Passion or Chapon.

Francois Manon:

Manon was right next to Mary.  It had a very unpretentious vibe, which I really liked.  My expectations were somewhat low coming in, for some reason, but as soon as I started talking to them there, I realized it might be a sleeper.

The truffle was the low point, but only because it went for that creamy Bruges-style that I don't really like.

That said, the milk ganache bonbon was great.  The dark ganache bonbon was even better.  And the extradark palet d'or ganache bonbon was really wonderful.  At this point in my trip, I was not about to have this kind of reaction to anything but the very best, and that bonbon was at that level.

Frederic Blondeel:

My last stop in Brussels was Frederic Blondeel.  I sat down to take a break and wayyyy over-ordered.  I started with a 100% dark chocolate hot chocolate, sweetened only with honey.  It was delicious, and its bitterness (and relative thinness) reminded me of Taralucci e Vino in NYC -- one of my very favorite hot chocolates in the city.

I moved on to the set of four bonbons I ordered, plus the two that came complementary with the hot chocolate.  The Sao Tome-origin bonbon was very good.  It was bright but not fruity, similar to Venezuelan origin chocolate, but I think I'm more used to Venezuelan brightness at this point.  I kept expecting to get hit by fruitness but didn't.  Good experience.  Kept me on my toes.  The Papua New Guinea-origin bonbon was not bad but not as good.  It had some hints of raisons.  The Venezuela-origin bonbon was sweetened with honey, which threatened to overpower the chocolatey taste, but the bonbon managed to hold it together and keep a solid B+.

Aside from the origins, I got a truffle, which had a slight coffee-ish taste (though it was not made with coffee), but despite that was still pretty good.  The hazelnut bonbon (complementary with the hot chocolate) was surprisingly great.  That said, the speculoos bonbon (camouflaged in a silver wrapper) was not so great.

I also got a brownie.  Texture-wise, it was fudgey -- just how I like it.  But it was somehow unsatisfying.  Perhaps it did not have a sufficiently rich and deep flavor.  It wasn't bad.  I couldn't really point to the problem.  Maybe the problem was that I was full.

Lastly, I purchased two chocolate bars.  A 75%, Venezuela origin, which was excellent, and very Venezuela-y, but not as good as the Idilio or the Richart.  Next was an 85%, Ghana origin, which was also very good, but did not really stand out amongst all the great chocolatiers in Brussels.  As a comparison, it was not as good as the Ghana-origin bar at Chapon.

As I was sitting there, I heard someone comment that it was time to "make like a tree and leave."  I hadn't heard that one since the 90's, but you know what?  That dude was totally right.  I hopped the next train to Antwerp.

Bottom Line:  Brussels legitimately rivals Paris for being the best chocolate city I've been to.  Its top tier was better than Paris', led by Passion, Mary, and Gerbaud, but Paris was just an unending assault of quality.

Paris Day 1

Cercle de L'Union Club:

From Berlin, I went to Paris.  I immediately met up with two family friends, who hosted me at the Cercle de L'Union Club for lunch.  It's one of those fancy, private athletic clubs, and we dined overlooking the squash courts.  The food was great, and for dessert I helped myself to their chocolate mousse.  It was surprisingly good, from a non-chocolatier.  Though I guess not that surprising given the general quality of the place.

Laduree:

The first shop on my list to visit from there was the original La Maison du Chocolat location, since La Maison one of my very favorite chocolate spots in NYC.  But before I got there, I ran into the flagship, original Laduree.  That's sort of how it is in Paris.  Oh, there's something famous.  Oh, there's another of the world's best chocolatiers.  It got to be the point that this stuff was in the way.  "Ugh, wat is this giant building blocking my way to the next chocolate shop?!  Oh, that's the Parliament.  Of France."  

Anyways, everyone talks about Laduree's macarons constantly.  I told some guy at the punk show in Berlin that I was going to Paris, and he started going on about Laduree's macarons.  You've probably heard of them.  I'd always preferred La Maison's, so I thought this was a good opportunity to create a macaron taste test. 

Spoilers: their chocolate macarcon, while excellent (and certainly one of the best available in NYC) came in fourth (out of about six -- though all wound up being excellent... spoilers again).  They had a special, Santa Domingo-origin dark chocolate macaron that was even better, and it was both my and my friend's second favorite macaron that we tasted.

I also purchased a "Buvette Chocolat" cake.  It was good but not exceptional.  Not wanting to waste stomach space, I went to throw out a big chunk of it.  But standing over the trash I found myself taking "just one more bite" over and over again until it was almost gone. The thin bottom layer, though, I threw out without any hesitation, as it was made with nuts.

La Maison du Chocolat:

From there, I went to La Maison du Chocolat.  I consider most of La Maison's products to set the standard for exceptional chocolate products.  If you can do better than La Maison, in anything, you know you are making a top-of-the-world-level product.  If Sprungli sets the bar in Zurich, La Maison sets the bar higher in Paris.

I bought two bonbons -- a Ghana-origin, Akasombo bonbon and an "Extreme" dark chocolate bonbon.  The Akasombo was delicious, of course, though my favorite of their origin bonbonbs remains Caracas.  The Extreme was good too, but a bit fruity.  I also purchased a truffle, which was exactly the kind of excellent standard-setting truffle I was looking for.

Finally, I purchased a dark chocolate macaron.  La Maison has three types of chocolate macarons, dark chocolate, dark chocolate with nibs, and milk chocolate.  The former two have always been my favorite macarons.  Unsurprsingly, the dark chocolate macaron was my favorite in the taste test.  Somewhat more surprisingly, it was also my friend's favorite.  Angel agrees with me as well on this, so it is now canon in my mind that La Maison makes the best chocolate macaron.

Jean-Paul Hevin:

From La Maison, I went to Jean-Paul Hevin.  I had been to his outpost in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and it blew me away.  In all fairness, though, I hadn't eaten all day, and Tokyo is not a world's mecca for chocolate.

I purchased his "Guayacuil" chocolate cake, and it was very good -- better than, but in the same league as, Laduree's Buvette.  I think after the Peclard cake in Zurich, my standards were sort of off the charts.

I got two bonbons -- a "Carraibe" (Caribbean-origin)  bonbon and an "Amere" dark chocolate bonbon.  Both were amazing and lived up to my memory of Tokyo.  They actually were better than the bonbons at La Maison, which puts Jean-Paul Hevin in an elite crowd.

I also purchased his chocolate macaron.  It was extremely hard to grade, because the top four macarons were clearly of one type -- fancy and indulgently chocolatey.  But Jean-Paul Hevin's was totally different.  It was darker in color and tasted like a chocolate teddy graham.  (I love chocolate teddy grahams.)  So it just wasn't trying as hard, and it was really a wonderful experience in its own right.  That said, if you had to put it next to the macarons from La Maison, Laduree, or Pierre Herme (to come), it wouldn't stand up.

Finally, I purchased a dark chocolate bar (the silver-wrapped bar on the bottom left of the last picture in this review), but it wound up being too fruity for my liking.

After my amazing experience in Tokyo, I had very high expectations of Jean-Paul Hevin.  While it did not disappoint, it was the first casualty of "not-as-good-by-comparison" -- something that was continually repeated in Paris, a city with an overwhelming number of the world's best chocolatiers.

Michel Cluizel:

I also stopped by Michel Cluizel's flagship.  Because he has a nice shop in NYC, I did not feel the need to go nuts -- his 99% bonbon is my favorite bonbon in the world, probably, but since I can get it anytime in NYC, I let it go.

I did purchase a chocolate macaron.  It was actually similar to Jean-Paul Hevin's, in color and taste.  It was a bit crusty, texture-wise, but nonetheless excellent.  I made a mental note not to neglect the macaron next time I'm at the NYC shop.

Angelina:

I needed a break, so of course I went to the home of one of the densest chocolate products in Paris -- Angelina, famous for its extremely thick hot chocolate.   It was a weekday during the day, and there was a line out the door:

Surprisingly, the line moved fairly quickly, and quite soon I was upstairs, looking down on the poor suckers waiting:

I ordered a hot chocolate (obviously) and the Chocolat Africaine Cake.  That's "African Chocolate Cake," for those of you who don't speak french.

I was prepared to be unimpressed by the hot chocolate.  Afterall NYC has City Bakery, DT Works (or had it least), D'Espresso, Grom, and tons of other super-thick hot chocolates.

It still totally impressed me.  I don't think I'd rate it more highly than City Bakery, but City Bakery is my childhood favorite and may get an unfair boost.  It definitely at least holds its own with any other thick hot chocolate in NYC.  It's very thick.  So thick the top layer becomes a film if you let it sit too long, much like in the chocolate pudding you probably made when you were a kid.  Only this isn't pudding.  It's hot chocolate.  (I think.)  But taste-wise it was just as impressive as texture-wise.  It's incredibly rich and chocolatey.  When you use so much chocolate in your hot chocolate, the bean really matters, because the flavors of it will dominate the drink.  Angelina chooses wisely.

The cake was slightly less impressive.  It was probably my least favorite of the Paris cakes I purchased.  That said, it was still totally excellent, and I was unbelievably full already.  So I'm not sure it got a fair shake.  The bar in Paris is just ridiculously high.

Debauve et Gallais:

I then stopped by Debauve et Gallais, but I pretty much only had the stomach to eat a piece of dark chocolate.  It was excellent and chocolatey -- I guessed it was Ghanaian, but they would not confirm.

I also purchased two bars -- 85% and 99%, both blends.  Both were a bit melty when I ate them -- they melted more easily than some of the other bars I purchased.  Also, neither was bitter at all, particularly surprising from the 99%.  That said, the 99% did include sugar, soy lecithin, and extra cocoa butter, which probably explains both the meltiness and the lack of bitterness.  I preferred the 99% to the 85%.  I thought their solution to the bitterness problem was creative and worked just right.  It's definitely among my favorite 99%s I've ever had, if not my favorite (I usually like things around 91%, so 99% can be a bit high for me).  The 85% bar was less exceptional, but still completely excellent.  

I finished my Debauve et Gallais experience totally impressed.

Pierre Herme:

Next stop was Pierre Herme.  I picked up a chocolate macaron for the taste test, and it beat expectations by the most.  Given my preference for La Maison, I tend to trust a store full of chocolate to make chocolate macarons rather than a store full of macarons.  But Herme did an unbelievable job.  The macaron came in third in our taste test -- right between the special and regular Laduree macarons.  Later, when talking with some French friends, they were surprised Herme did not come in first, so I guess the secret is out in France much more than in the US.

I also bought a Chuao, Venezuela-origin dark chocolate bar.  It was excellent.  It was really good even amongst all the high quality bars I was purchasing at the time.  Like I took a bite and was like, "This is great," and then started to go on with my day, but then had to go back and be like, "No, this is really great."  That said, the flavors and textures were not all that memorable over time.  All I really remember is how much I enjoyed it.  Which I guess is what is most important here.  Let's not let all this chocolate blog glory go to our heads.  We're just looking for something delicious.

Richart:

My last stop of day #1 was Richart, and by then I did not have the stomach for, well, anything.  I picked up a chocolate bar that actually did not get eaten until I got to Nairobi, almost a month later.  It was excellent.  Two friends and I, starving at the time, wolfed it down in record time.  Much like Idiolo bar I purchased at Truffe, it was a quintessential Venezuelan bar, with all the flavor notes one would expect from there.  And it was almost as good as that memorably exquisite bar.

Bottom Line: This was just day one.  Will David's stomach survive day two?  The suspense must be killing you.