Hu Kitchen 72%, Almond Butter + Puffed Quinoa, and Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding

Hu Kitchen is an interesting place -- it's a restaurant, but they also make their own chocolate bars.  The bars use coconut, and you can sort of tell, but the "Simple" 72% was still pretty good and chocolatey.  The Almond Butter + Puffed Quinoa bar was less appealing -- too heavy on the almond.

But the surprising star was the Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding.  I love pudding.  Especially from Puddin'.  But since going vegan, my options have been severely limited.  My previous two attempts did not go so well.  The vegan creme-freche or whatever it was they put on top was actually pretty good.  What interfered were the candied walnuts.  Look, I like candied walnuts.  Throw them on a salad.  Bam!  More delicious salad.  Because sugar.  But I am eating chocolate pudding, not salad.  Candied walnuts are not an upgrade from what I already have in my cup.  They are in the way.  So, when you order, I recommend asking them to hold the walnuts.

Bottom Line: Worthwhile in general, including for chocolate, and especially for the chia seed pudding.

Amorino Chocolate Sorbet

I had eaten Amorino sorbet and gelato before, and I was not particularly impressed, especially with the gelato.

I recently went back, and I got the sorbet by itself.  It was a much more satisfying experience.  The gelato is obviously high-end, but it's just not that chocolatey.  The sorbet solves that problem, as sorbets are wont to do.  And you have to give Amorino credit for having lots of chocolate flavors.

Bottom Line: If you are in the mood for some chocolate sorbet in Greenwich Village, especially if you are in the mood for chocolate sorbet mysteriously served as if it were a flower, I begrudgingly have to recommend Amorino, despite prior biases.

Creperie

Dark chocolate crepe with chocolate fudge and chocolate brownies, covered in chocolate sauce.

From the outside:

The only downside is they didn't have chocolate ice cream.

From the everythingside:

There may be a more chocolatey crepe somewhere in NYC, but if there is, I don't know about it.

Bottom Line: My favorite crepe.

Churros and Chocolate at Tortaria

Tortaria is a perfectly serviceable... tortaria.  But don't bother with dessert:

The churros were too hard, and the "chocolate" was probably 99% corn syrup.

Bottom Line: Nope.

Disappointments

My phone broke, so I have been without a camera.  But that won't stop me from complaining on the internet!

So I went to OTTO Enoteca.  There are a lot of things to like about Otto -- like that board that displays whose table will be next in that old-timey flip-card way and (more importantly) the amazing gelato.  But there are also a lot of things to dislike about Otto, like the way they capitalize all the letters in their name and, well, everything else.  Just as Cafe Grumpy's hot chocolate made some top-10 list, Otto's made one or two or maybe most of them.  But listing Otto's is far more outrageous.  First of all, Leila and I share the pet peeve of restaurants' deciding to stop serving their signature (chocolate) dishes.  Otto serves their apparently popular hot chocolate during only a narrow window in the winter.  My recent "successful" procurement of Otto's hot chocolate came on my seventh attempt.  But the problems only begin there.  I tried to get my hot chocolate to go, but they literally did not have any paper cups in the entire restaurant.  They forced me to drink it on the spot.  Then they made me wait about 10 minutes for it.  When it arrived, it was covered in whipped cream, without asking me (ew).  Even after scraping that off, the hot chocolate was sickeningly sweet.  Even the cookies served with it were inedible.  At least it only cost $6 for basically a tiny shot.  Brutal.

Also, I went back to L'Arte del Gelato, this time in Chelsea Market.  Trying to give it yet another shot, I ordered the Italian hot chocolate affogato with the chocolate gelato.  This type of hot chocolate float is basically my favorite type of food.  But it was just as disappointing as their chocolate gelato solo.  It had the misfortune of being less thick than Italian hot chocolate should be but still sufficiently thick as to make me a little sick.  Of course it was too sweet and not sufficiently chocolatey.  None of my friends who tried it would even have a second sip.

Bottom Line: Get your hot chocolate from Fresco or City Bakery (review pending).  Don't play around when it comes to something so serious.

OatMeals

I have already mentioned my affinity for chocolate oatmeal.  Well, you can buy it in New York, of course, at OatMeals.

OatMeals is an oatmeal bar.  You get water- or milk-based oatmeal, into which you can mix... well, anything you could possibly want.  This time I kept it pretty simple -- dark chocolate, pumpkin seeds, chocolate sauce... and a second helping of dark chocolate.  And it was glorious.

Bottom Line:  Now that I am an adult I eat adult chocolate cereals.  Let's all be adults together.  Wait, you've got a little fudge on the corner of... no, the other si-- here, I'll get it.

Sundaes and Cones

This is my favorite ice cream in New York.  Angel has made a strong case for La Maison du Chocolat's seasonal chocolate ice cream, but to me, Sundaes and Cones will always be the champ.

Photo credit to Kasey

We've talked a lot about ice cream categories.  I just made this in MSPaint to let you know where we are:

To give another example of this quadrant, you might have the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.  I like this quadrant.  It's usually fun and unpretentious.  Sundaes and Cones is sort of an oasis of calm in an otherwise barely sufferable Greenwich Village area.

Kasey talked to them during her trip and came away feeling they did not concentrate as much on fresh ingredients as Ample Hills.  For example, their sweet corn ice cream is available year round, which to her indicated they use frozen corn.  To which I respond: I should hope so, because this is frozen food.  Kasey ultimately agreed, and she put them towards the very top of her ice cream list, trailing only Ample Hills.

The reason why Sundaes and Cones is so great is fairly obvious, and Kasey and I agree on this, is that their flavors are all DELICIOUS.  They are incredibly flavorful and not overly creamy.  The pumpkin is the pumpkinyest.  Their poppy and wasabi flavors are surprisingly exceptional.  And of course, the defining characteristic of their chocolate ice cream is just how chocolatey it is.

Now, I'm not the pretentious type to consider ice cream and gelato and sorbet to be incomparable categories of food.  But in a world where I refused to compare among them, I would definitely rate Sundaes and Cones as my favorite ice cream in the city, as well as my favorite chocolate ice cream in the city.

Bottom Line:  I love this place.

Alta

Firstly I should say that I'm mad at this place. They don't accept credit cards, apparently, but they did not tell us that until the end of our meal.

Furthermore: they should accept credit cards. It is one thing if you are a small stationary story struggling to make ends meet and you don't want to rack up a $5 charge with Mastercard every time you sell a $3.50 letterpress greeting card. But Alta is expensive. An individual meal here can easily come to $60 or more. How many people do you know who regularly carry around $60 in cash?

I realize this is not yet about chocolate. But what is the point of the Internet if not to complain about commerce?

Moving on to the chocolate: I ate this thing.

It's called a chocolate-mint egg, and indeed it does come in an actual egg shell, in an actual egg cup. Very cute presentation. It cost $5, which was a little bit excessive for something so petite, I thought.

Here is what all they fit inside this single egg shell:

1) creme brulee. I think it was supposed to be mint or maybe chocolate, but I didn't get a strong flavor off it. Mostly it was just creamy. Lovely texture, could have used more taste.
2) chocolate crunchies. I love these things, obvs. They are chocolatey and textural.
3) mint gel. This was what gave the egg its mint flavor, and I do generally love mint flavoring-- but because of its gel texture and green color, I was a little put off. It reminded me too much of the dentist.

Overall, these components complemented one another well. But honestly, I would have been just as happy with a bunch of chocolate crunchies stuffed in an egg shell.

All the food we got at Alta was quite good, and I see they have a number of other chocolate dessert options, so maybe someday I will go back to try the others. You know, next time I get paid in cash.

BOTTOM LINE: Creative dessert with creative presentation, interesting texture combination, but not super-flavorful.