Crystal Plaza

I recently went to a friend's wedding at the Crystal Plaza, in New Jersey. I'm going to keep this review short because the Crystal Plaza is an event space, not a restaurant, which means you will probably never choose to go there. Either one of your friends will have a wedding or a bar mitzvah here, so you will go. Or no one you know will ever have an event here, so you won't go.

So let me just reassure you: if you DO someday find yourself at the Crystal Plaza, they have an awesome chocolate plate for dessert.

That would be, my friends, chocolate lava cake, chocolate ice cream (presumably dairy-free, since this was a kosher wedding, though it certainly tasted good to me), and a chocolate piece. Every wedding guest got a plate that looked like this. How lucky were we?

Also there was a cake, and I photographed it because it's beautiful. But I didn't eat it. Because it wasn't chocolate.

BOTTOM LINE: An excellent event space for chocolate. If you attend a bat mitzvah here, save room for dessert.

Mesa Grill

Mesa Grill is a Bobby Flay restaurant. I think that is a name that means a lot to people who watch the Food Network, but I am not one of those people.

Here, however, is a name that does mean something to me: Chocolate Pretzel Tart with Spicy Peanut Butter-Chocolate Swirl Ice Cream.

It costs $11, which is a lot for dessert, but that price may actually be fair, considering the insane number of textures and flavors going into this concoction. The ice cream really was spicy. The juxtaposition of the soft chocolate and its hard outer shell was fascinating.

BOTTOM LINE: This is not a necessary chocolate experience. But if you're at the Mesa Grill and have $11 to spare, you'd be a fool not to try it, because you would be hard-pressed to find this particular dessert anywhere else.

City Bakery Hot Chocolate

There are many hot chocolates in NYC, and now around the world, that I can say I really love.  But beyond them all, I love the hot chocolate at City Bakery.

Also available with a giant marshmallow

It's hard to be objective.  I've been having this ever since I was a kid.  It was the first super-thick, super-chocolatey hot chocolate I ever had.  Since then, I've had the offerings of DT Works, Grom, and others in NYC, and of Angelina and others in Europe.  I have not been disappointed by any of those places, but whenever I come back to City Bakery, even though it may be slightly sweeter than some others, it feels perfect -- just like home.

Bottom Line: Objectively, it holds up to any hot chocolate in the world.  Subjectively, this is the New York native's holy grail.

(Pro Tip: During the winter, City Bakery hot chocolate is also sold at Birdbath Bakeries all around the city.)

Lavazza Hot Chocolate

Usually I avoid Eataly with all my might because, hello, I am not a tourist. But last week I was hungry and in the neighborhood, so I gave it a shot. Naturally I wound up quenching my hunger with a hot chocolate, as that is my go-to dinner food.

The hot chocolate was Lavazza, which is one of the first stands you see when you walk in the front door. In true Italian fashion, it was extremely thick. It was surprisingly delicious, considering my uninformed snobbery about Eataly. It really did taste like Italian hot chocolate. And the price point was surprisingly reasonable-- about as much as Starbucks hot chocolate, only way thicker, denser, and darker.

BOTTOM LINE: Surprisingly delicious and intense hot chocolate; great value for the price.

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.

Cafe Grumpy

David and I both read a lot of articles about chocolate in NYC. In many of these articles, authors list their "top tens" of things. (By the way, we are not above this practice, which is why we just posted our Best Chocolate of 2012 list.) One time I read an article about the "top ten" hot chocolates in NYC, and Cafe Grumpy made the list.

Obviously, this meant I had to check it out. And here is my review: it was okay.

Cafe Grumpy's hot chocolate is hot. It is chocolate. It is creamy. It looks pretty. It is enjoyable on a cold day. It is not one of the "top ten" best hot chocolates in the city.

That's okay. We can't all be Fresco.

The weird thing is, even though I have established how I feel about Cafe Grumpy's hot chocolate (answer: fine), I keep going back there, just because I know it is on somebody else's "top ten list." I keep waiting to have that "top ten" experience, even though clearly my tastes differ from those of that author.

BOTTOM LINE: Journalism is a powerful force. And this hot chocolate is: fine.

The Best Chocolate of 2012

As you may have noticed, it is a popular thing on the Internet to post "year-end reviews," in which bloggers review their best albums, books, recipes, celebrity pregnancies, etc. of the year.

Not to be left in the dust, we here at Chocolate NYC are bringing you a list of our favorite NYC chocolates of 2012. We've included links to our reviews of each of these products, so you can learn more about why we've included them in our best-of list.

As we approach the new year, let's all resolve to eat as many of these foods as possible.

BEST HOT CHOCOLATE
Leila: Fresco
David: City Bakery

BEST COOKIE
Leila: Levain Bakery
David: DT Works

BEST FROZEN TREAT
Leila: Brooklyn Farmacy
David: Fresco

BEST CHOCOLATE BAR
Leila: Prestat 71% Dark Chocolate English Mint Crunch
David: Dolceria Bonajuto 90%

BEST CAKE OR CUPCAKE
Leila: Sweet Revenge
David: Two Little Red Hens

I'd also like to take this moment to remind you that we maintain an updated "best of the best" list, running alongside the right-hand column of this blog. Basically, there is no reason for any of us to ever have to eat sub-par chocolate.

Your turn, readers: what are your favorite chocolates of the past year? And what chocolates are you excited to eat in 2013?