Returning Home

Washington, D.C.

From Chapel Hill, we drove up to Washington, DC.  This is another tale about the value of friendship: I did not have time to procure any chocolate for myself, but my friend Mick came through in the clutch (again) and delivered three chocolate bars (of which I selected two to keep)!  They were both from Salazon Chocolate Co.  

The first was "sea salt and coffee," which does not sound like something I would like, but I found myself shocked to be enjoying it thoroughly!  It's easily the best coffee-infused chocolate bar I've ever had, though in all fairness this is a low bar.  The other bar was pure sea salt.  And I mean that (almost literally).  It is honestly one of the saltiest things I've ever tasted.  Like, it's saltier than just eating table salt.  Which is something I've been known to do.  But my personal problems aside, this bar is for the intense salt fan, who does not stop at pouring bottles of Morton's down his or her throat.

Home

I finally returned home, accompanied by the tiniest baby.  Waiting for me at home, to my near-chagrin, were boxes of chocolate.  My real estate agent, with whom I have not spoken since getting my apartment over 6 years earlier, had sent me a box of Richart bonbons.  

Hot off that stunninig success, I was quite excited.  Alas, even the "pure" chocolate pieces were not rich enough, and the flavors were uninteresting.  It came with a sheet of pure chocolate, which was a little waxy.  Perhaps Richart in the US is very different from the Richart in France.

That said, I also had waiting a box of Chocolate Bar bonbons, which knocked Richart right out of the park.  They were excellent. 

They were not quite at the level of, say, Stephan Dumon, and they were about a half-step behind the offerings at the Chocolate Door, but they were still really excellent -- closer to the near-perfect Dumon bonbons than to the box of Richart I'd just sampled.  This is our third time reviewing Chocolate Bar, and we've had consistently great experiences.

But honestly, that was just the beginning.  There was also a milk chocolate bar, from Anne Taintor, which was almost indistinguishable from the one I bought at the Belgian tourist shop -- same ingredients, with the same cacao content.  

The US bar had a slightly creamier texture, but they were so similar that it would be impossible to pick a favorite between them.

I also received a Fairytale-brand brownie.  

Actually, two of them.  They were surprisingly excellent, not just for prepackaged brownies, but for any brownie.  They were fudgey, fun, and delicious.

Lastly, my friend Ellie brought over her amazing chocolate cake and her dad's literally professional chocolate mousse.  Wow.

Seriously, guys.  Friends: I recommend them.


Chocolate Tasting:

Finally, I had a chance to sit down with Leila and my friend Austin and do a tasting of a few of the chocolates I'd saved from Europe.

First, we went over the five bars from Del Ray in Antwerp.  This was an interesting experience, because first we ate them in decreasing percentages, but then i did a blind taste test to pick favorites.  I never believed that the order was too important, but boy was I wrong.  When you do a blind taste test, switching back and forth among the different percentages until you settle on an ordered list of favorites, it becomes very clear that the sweetest will win.  If you eat a piece of chocolate and follow it up with a higher percentage piece, it just won't taste as good.  While my initial list was probably 66% Carribean, 72% Venezuelan, 54.5% Blend, 70% Sao Tome, 85% Ecuador, my blind taste test list was 66% Carribean, 54.5% Blend, 70% Sao Tome, 85% Ecuador.  Basically, the 72% Venezuela bar really suffered for its higher percentage.  That said, the lower percentage bars here were truly excellent.  When I tried the blend, I was shocked at how uncandy-like it was given how sweet it was.

Leila and Austin did not agree with me, but they didn't like any of the bars as much as I did.  Their order was the same -- Venezuela, Sao Tome, Ecuador, Carribean, Blend.  They did not appreciate the sweetness of the lower percentage bars.  That said, we all generally agreed that the Sao Tome was just sort of a more bland version of the Venezuela

We made a spreadsheet of our comments:

Spoilers.

Anyways, we also taste-tested three different mint-flavored bars.  I didn't like any of them.  But we all agreed that the Zaabar bar was the best, followed by the Dolfin bar, and the 1888 bar wasn't even in the running.  We all hated the 1888 bar.  Leila noted that it tastes like the Dentist.  The Dolfin was definitely the most complex flavor wise.  I was dubious of the overly-natural taste in the Zaabar bar, but Austin and Leila loved it.

We also tried the two "original recipe" bars from the Choco-Story Museum.  Both were stone ground, which Leila cannot tolerate and Austin thought was weird.  The Aztec bar was more finely ground than the Spanish.  But flavor-wise, we all agreed that the Spanish combination of flavors was vastly superior.

Whichever peppers and spices they put in there were definitely a historical improvement.  I actually enjoyed it, despite the spice, which I never would have expected.

Lastly, we reviewed my top two truffles from Europe.

We agreed that the Mary truffle tasted like fudge, and childhood.  I preferred it slightly, but Leila and Austin agreed that Chapon had created pretty much the Platonic Ideal of the truffle.  Hard to dispute.

Bottom Line: I lead a very difficult life.

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.

San Francisco

Yes, in this post I review San Francisco for its chocolate.  I am an ambitious man.  As you will soon be able to tell from my description of all the chocolate I ate in my ONE DAY in SF.

Double Rainbow's Ultra Chocolate Ice Cream at SFO

I got started before leaving the airport:

Honestly?  It was really good.  Off to a great start, with chocolatey chocolate ice cream.

Tcho

I've liked Tcho for a long time.  I first encountered them years ago at the Chocolate Show.  Their thing is to make "flavored" chocolate without using any flavoring ingredients -- just chocolate, sugar, soy lecithin, and vanilla.  Their "flavors" are "fruity" (from Peru), "citrusy" (from Madagascar), "nutty" (from Ecuador), and my (obvious) favorite, "chocolatey" (from Ghana).  These origins are no accident -- Peruvian chocolate is famously fruity, while West African chocolate (especially from Ghana) is by far the most common chocolate we eat, so we identify it as quintessentially "chocolatey."  (Also in the works are floral and earthy bars.)

I stopped by Tcho twice -- first I picked up a small "chocolatey" square and a 99% blend bar (chocolatey and nutty).  

I seriously recommend all of Tcho's bars.  It's a great way to develop a chocolate vocabulary and to familiarize yourself with different origins' different flavors.  The ingredient list for their 99% bar says it includes only cocoa beans, so it might actually be 100%.  It tastes it.  Good but bitter.  I also got a slightly disappointing ice cream pop of some sort:

I later returned to Tcho to do a (free) factory tour, which they seem to offer multiple times per day.  No photos were allowed, so this is all I managed to take:

It was a good tour.  I already knew a lot of what they were teaching, but it was a really solid background on the making of chocolate.   They also gave out samples of all their dark chocolates, as well as several milk chocolates -- specifically a "classic" milk chocolate and a "cocoa" milk chocolate.  Both were delicious, and both were as described.  Obviously, I preferred the latter.  After the tour, I had to make several more purchases:

I got a Tcho Shot -- a shot of melted dark chocolate -- along with some chocolate-covered nibs and some more "chocolatey" squares (for distribution throughout my trip).  The shot was excellent, but actually less thick than I expected when compared to something like the hot chocolate at Grom or DT Works.  The nibs were good, too, but were not as "pure" as most Tcho products.  They were made with confectioners' glaze, among other ingredients.  Tcho usually prides itself on tempering its bars to get a shine without any glaze, but that's obviously much more difficult -- if not impossible -- when trying to coat nibs.

Scharfen Berger

Scharfen Berger has moved their factory from SF to Illinois, but they still have their outpost at the Ferry Building.  They sell stuff there that you can't get elsewhere:

I tried a whole bunch of things, and most were really good, but I'm just not as much of a fan of Scharfen Berger as many others.  They really like fruity chocolate, which is just not my thing.  I tried some mint bark, which was delicious, and their bonbons were of course good quality, but I was not wowed.

Recchiuti

Recchiuti is a SF-based chocolatier whose shop is also in the Ferry building.  My trip just having gotten underway, I was still just whetting my appetite, and I picked up a brownie, bar, and some bonbons:

The bar was good but not extraordinary.  I always love bars with nibs, and this had a nice smokey flavor, but I couldn't get too excited about it.  The two bonbons were a step up.  There was a very dark "force noir," which was good, and a Venezuela-origin bonbon, which was even better.  Best of all was the brownie.  It was chocolatey, fudgey, and delicious.  One of the best brownies available anywhere.

Neo Cocoa

I had wanted to try Neo Cocoa, but I couldn't figure out a way to get any.  Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across there table in the Ferry Building totally by accident -- and they were passing out free samples!  Most of the products available were flavors, so I settled on the mint.  It was ok, but nothing special.  I'd like to try something purer by them.

Fog City News: Labooko 100% Peru and Amano 70% Dos Rios

Many cities in the US have unassuming shops with excellent chocolate selections.  In New York, the classic example is The Meadow.  In SF, it's Fog City News.  Outside of chocolate, the two shops could not be more different.  Fog City News is exactly as described.  It sells newspapers and magazines.  The Meadow sells salts and bitters.  But they actually have a startlingly similar chocolate collection, which speaks incredibly well of both places.  (Though Fog City News is consistently $1-$2 cheaper per bar.)  I took the opportunity, of course, to pick up two bars I had not seen elsewhere, as recommended by the proprietors.

Labooko is an Austrian company, and the packaging and bar is possibly the most beautiful I've ever seen.  Their 100% bar is a Peru origin.  Peru is typically my least favorite origin, because it is typically the fruitiest.  This bar, though, was exceptional.

At 100%, it's a slow eat, so a lot of people got a chance to taste it.  Even people who didn't like 100% bars liked this.  Possibly the fruitiness offset some of the bitterness.  There is only one caveat: after you eat this, everything else just doesn't taste as good.  Normally you start with the darkest chocolate and work your way down (or else the dark just tastes too bitter in comparison).  Trying that with Labooko is a mistake.  I can't tell you why.  Maybe it's just so good that everything else becomes disappointing.  Fortunately, I saved some of the other bar I purchased at Fog City after initially eating some subsequent to a bite of Labooko:

Amano is a Utah-based company, and I purchased a 70% Dominican-origin bar.  I like that each square has the logo:

Eating it separately from the Labooko bar, it was actually quite good, though by no means my favorite from the trip.

See's Candies

See's Candies is famous in SF.  It's an early career Warren Buffett acquisition, and one can see why.  They do a great job of producing delicious, candy-quality chocolate.  The 62% "dark" chocolate bar had milk in it. But it was still delicious.  The bonbons there cost half the price or less as compared with many of the other places I went, but they too were delicious.  They would never be mistaken for something snobby and artisanal, but that's not what they are trying to do.  They were extremely chocolatey, and they tasted great.  Every See's I saw had a line, but a short line, which is a pretty good indication that they are doing their business right.  Nice job, Warren.

Cocoa Bella: Mary's Truffle and Bon Bon and Christopher Elbow Bon Bon

My last chocolate stop was Cocoa Bella.  Cocoa Bella is a chocolate importer.  They don't make their own chocolate, but they scour the world for the best bonbons and truffles.  They have a couple shops in SF.  I went to one in some mall.  I asked for guidance on the chocolatiest items they had, of course.  I was served a truffle and bonbon from Belgian chocolatier Mary and a bonbon from the local SF Kansas City-based chocolatier Christopher Elbow, whose (San Francisco) store I did not have time to seek out (thanks for the correction, Elaine!).

The Mary's truffle completely blew me away.  It was the first time since Bespoke Chocolates closed in NYC that I'd been so blown away by the quality of a truffle.  I thought there was no way that they would replicate the quality in their bonbon, and I was once again blown away.  It was incredible.  I was so impressed, actually, that I went all the way to Brussels to visit their flagship store and purchase even more of their products.  This is not a joke.  That review is still to come.

The Christopher Eblow 70% bonbon, in comparison, was bound to disappoint.  It was smokey and not chocolatey enough.

(As a side note, I did not make it back to XOX Truffles, but I had been there previously, and it is very good, though not particularly outstanding.)

Bottom Line: Honestly, San Francisco gives New York a run for its money on the chocolate front.  In any case, the two are certainly the top two chocolate cities in the USA.