Bedford Cheese Shop: Middlebury Chocolates 75% Dominican, Dick Taylor 70% Ecuador, Ritual Chocolate 75% Balao (Ecuador), Twenty-Four Blackbirds 68% Dominican, and Zoe's Chocolate Co. Raw Bar with Nibs

This was a surprise.  I got tipped off by a friend of a friend that Bedford Cheese Shop on Irving Place had a great chocolate selection.  And they did!

I had not tried any of these before, and I really stocked up.  With all the fancy, single-origin chocolates, my favorite was actually Zoe Chocolate Co.'s "The Raw Bar" with nibs.  Because it was the chocolatiest.  Obviously.

But the Dick Taylor bar was great too.  The consensus was that the Ecuadorian origins had a leg up on the Dominican origins.  We had lots of complicated things to say about these bars, but honestly, who really cares?  They were all delicious.

There was a split over whether the Ritual bar (above) was better than the Dick Taylor bar.  I had a mild preference for the Dick Taylor, but they were both excellent.

The Middlebury bar (above), had SO MUCH WRAPPING that it made the chocolate look tiny, even though it was a totally respectable quantity of chocolate.  It was good, but not quite as rich as the others.

The Twenty-Four Blackbirds bar (above, smaller than it looks) suffered from some bloom (as you can see).  As a result, it was probably the weakest of the four.  In other chocolate-offs, though, it could easily have been the best -- it was up against stiff competition and not in top form.

I did not get to try the Poco Dolce toffee, because it had dairy in it, but it seemed to go over pretty well.

Bottom Line: A great haul from a surprisingly great chocolate shop.  Or cheese shop.  Details.

Maison Kayser Chocolate Tart and Chocolate Mousse

Angel and I reviewed Maison Kayser when it opened in NYC, and we loved it.  We went back to the original, though there are now three other locations, and we still love it.

Angel still loved the mousse.  She still loved it more than I did, but I liked it a bit more the second time around.  I think I let her deal with most of those brownie bit things on top this time.  

The tart, though, was steller.  Perhaps a bit too much crust -- as is often the case with mini-tarts -- but that is easily ignored.  It's an intensely chocolatey experience.

Bottom Line: This place is really great, and everyone should go there.  Period.

Chocolate Croissant Bread Pudding from Maialino

David and I went to Maialino for dinner this weekend. We definitely did not need to get dessert there, as I had been baking cookies and hamantaschen all day, eating dough as I went, and after dinner we had plans to taste a bunch of chocolate bars from Istanbul.

But then we saw chocolate croissant bread pudding listed on the menu, and, as David pointed out, "How often are you out Maialino?" And so there was dessert.



This was listed on the menu as being accompanied with hazelnut gelato, by the way. Obviously we subbed in chocolate gelato instead.

Here is what we said while we ate this dish:

DAVID: "I am so far from having regrets right now. What is the opposite of regret?"
LEILA: "I don't know, but right now all I am experiencing is delight."

DAVID: "This dessert is literally so good that it makes me feel like I've wasted the rest of my life until now."

LEILA: "Jesus Christ. This thing. How is it like this?"

Here is what our plates looked like when the waitress came to collect them:



BOTTOM LINE: Don't waste your life. Eat this dessert.