Breads' Chocolate Babka

Breads Bakery in Union Square allegedly has the best chocolate babka in the city.  

If this were a baked goods blog or a babka blog, maybe I would agree.  But it is a chocolate blog.  And from that perspective I do not.  Even a cursory examination will tell you that this babka is not chocolatey enough.

Bottom Line: A nice piece of babka that, like everything else in this world, needs more chocolate.

Bernard Castelain "Noir Infini" 99%

Bernard Castelain is a French chocolatier.  He is also very good at his job.

Some friends got me this.  I don't know from where.  I think I need to find out.

Basically, here's the deal:  a 99% bar is usually indistinguishable from a 100% bar, because 1% sugar is just not very much sugar.  But Castelain throws in some extra cocoa butter, in addition to the ground beans, in order to cut the bitterness.  This is the strategy used by Devauve et Gallais to great success.  It works here as well.

Bottom Line: Delicious, edible 99% chocolate.

This thing from Good Health Cafe

I ordered from Good Health Cafe on Seamless.  I ordered a vegan "chocolate mousse cake."  I got this:

Embarassingly, it was actually pretty delicious.  But it was definitely not mousse cake.

Bottom Line: It loses one or two points for the inaccurate name and sloppy presentation, but at the end of the day it is surprisingly passable.

Super Foxy Sweets Classic Fudge and Chocolate Mint Fudge

I had never heard of vegan fudge before.  I had never thought of vegan fudge before.  But it exists, and it is actually pretty delicious.

So, as my friend Walter noted, it does not taste like butter the way non-vegan fudge sometimes does.  It has a light coconut taste, because they use coconut oil or milk or something.  But that's very mild.  It is quite chocolatey, as any decent fudge should be.  It is also incredibly sweet, as any good fudge must be.

They even have a mint flavor, and everyone knows we love mint.

I think by now you can guess where I procure this: Treehaus, of course.

Bottom Line: Vegan fudge that is delicious regardless of whether you are vegan.

La Maison du Chocolat 60% and 74%

I realized that I have been negligent as to La Maison du Chocolat.  It is among my favorite chocolate shops in NYC, and yet the only time I've reviewed it is when I was in Paris.

Friends to the rescue!  I was given two bars of their dark chocolate.  I had never had La Maison's bars, and unsurprisingly, they were excellent.

In fact, they were typical of La Maison -- perhaps not the best bars I've ever had, but they were super-high quality, chocolatey, and satisfying.  Both bars were excellent blended origins, with real thought to combining interesting flavors while keeping the bars delicious and chocolatey at heart.

Bottom Line: La Maison will never steer you wrong in anything.

FIG, in Charleston, South Carolina

I went on a trip to Charleston, South Carolina, where I was lucky enough to get dinner at this crazy-excellent restaurant called FIG (which stands for Food Is Good).

FIG is the sort of restaurant where we paid $15 for a caprese salad and it was worth every penny. This is the sort of caprese salad that I will be talking about for months to come. This is the sort of restaurant where you have to try a bite of every dish at the table, because everything is the best possible version of itself. Like, if you think you might like gnocchi, then you have to try a bite of someone's gnocchi, at which point you will discover that you love gnocchi.

Anyway. This is not a gnocchi blog. This is a chocolate blog.

Here are the two chocolate desserts on offer at FIG:

1) Torta caprese, with amaretto ice cream and strawberry coulis



The bottom layer, as perhaps you can see, is a thin chocolate-nut cake. Celiac-sufferers, take note: that thing has no wheat in it! I feel like I could make that. Maybe for Passover next year. Mine would not be as delicious as FIG's, of course. And it would not be topped with amaretto ice cream. It would be topped with chocolate ice cream. Obviously.

2) Chocolate-hazelnut budino, with olive oil croutons, caramel, and sea salt



This was my personal preference out of the two, though really you cannot go wrong with either. Our waiter was very clever, and she told us to make sure to dip our spoons all the way down to the bottom every single time, to get the perfect balance of caramel and chocolate-hazelnut in each bite. She was completely correct in her advice and now I would like her to advise me on every other endeavor in my life, like maybe how I should invest my money.

BOTTOM LINE: One of the best restaurants in Charleston, South Carolina. Possibly, based on their well-deserved press coverage, even one of the best restaurants in the American South, but I cannot speak to that personally because I haven't been to many restaurants in the South. Usually I am just in New York.

Blue Marble

This evening I went to Blue Marble and got this:



It's chocolate ice cream with chocolate mint cookies inside it. I don't even know what to say. Every bite was pure bliss. The cookie-to-ice cream ratio and the mint-to-chocolate ratio were perfect. I was so focused on eating this ice cream that I nearly walked into a streetlamp.

BOTTOM LINE: Blue Marble knows what they are doing.