You Are Invited to Chocolate NYC's One-Year Birthday Bash!

For the past twelve months (which is a lot of months, btw), Chocolate NYC has providing you with recommendations, reviews, and recipes for chocolate in New York City and beyond. We've created city guides to chocolates in countries around the world, we've drunk a zillion hot chocolates, we have blind taste-tested single-origin bars and created Excel grids with the results. And now the time has come: we are holding our first-ever in-person Chocolate NYC event!

Our birthday party and tasting extravaganza will be from 7-9pm on Tuesday, January 14, at the Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Tickets cost $20 and can be purchased here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/518277. There will be extremely limited tickets available at the door, so we strongly encourage buying in advance.

We have been working with some of our favorite chocolatiers and bakers, most of whom have been reviewed in these pages, to put together an all-star tasting menu for you. We'll be tasting bars, bon bons, and baked goods from the following:

Fina & Raw
Nunu
Tumbador
Patric
French Broad
TCHO
Michel Cluizel
Pacari
Raaka
Divine
Zoe's Chocolate Co.
Lindt
Hail Merry
The Chocolate Room
Momofuku Milk Bar
Equal Exchange
Kopali

That is only a partial list. There will be even more chocolates than that. But they will all be excellent, because we know what tastes good. That's our job.

BOTTOM LINE: We would love to see you at the Bell House on January 14. Come out. Bring your friends. Eat a lot of amazing things, have a beer, and celebrate our two favorite things: Chocolate and NYC!

Grand Hyatt New York chocolates

Last week Grand Hyatt New York launched their own artisanal chocolate line, and we were lucky enough to get invited to the launch party! Their executive pastry chef Gonzalo Jimenez is the chocolatier, and he's making all the chocolates by hand, in small batches, using his one tempering machine.

Here's the chef himself:

Let's get a close-up on that sculpture next to him. What is that thing?

Oh, of course, it's a sculpture made entirely of chocolate. This is actually Gonzalo Jimenez's thing, and he has even competed in chocolate sculpture competitions. We asked him if it was stressful to carry those things around. He emphatically said yes. We asked if he'd ever dropped one. He even more emphatically said yes. This is one reason why I am not a chocolate sculptor.

This was a lovely event and we got to meet many like-minded chocolate fans. The Hyatt kindly also had a table that served non-chocolate foods, like in case someone somehow got tired of eating the amazing chocolates. Here is what that area of the room looked like:

Please compare that view with this hubbub of action near the chocolate table:

Okay, enough with the people-watching. Let's look at the rest of the collection.

There was delicious bark and bars in dark, milk, and white chocolate, all of which are made out of Valrhona. But the star of the line is clearly the bon bons.

The bon bons come in five flavors: passion fruit, citrus, nutella and truffle, coffee, and dulce de leche. I probably ate two of each one. My favorite to eat was the nutella and truffle; I loved how the filling came oozing out. I don't know which flavor is the most pleasing to the eye, though.

For now the bars and bon bons are sold only at the Grand Hyatt New York's Market, since this is just a one-man operation. Incidentally, in looking up the link for the Market, I learned that it's open 24 hours a day.

BOTTOM LINE: When delicious, handcrafted bon bons are available 24 hours a day, you have no excuse not to eat them.

2 Beans again: featuring Pacari 85%, Aeschbach "Special" 80%, SPAGnVOLA 70%, Aesbach "Amer" 60%, Venchi 56%, Domori Javagrey milk chocolate, and Aeschbach Hazelnut

It was a friend's birthday, which seemed like a good excuse to go nuts at 2 Beans.  Hint: Anything is a good excuse to go nuts at 2 Beans.

So this is a lot of chocolate, and all of it was good.  I didn't try the Domori Javagrey milk bar or the Aeschbach hazelnut bar, but they were probably great, because those companies are great.

Of the other five bars, the lowest percentage was actually my favorite.  But that's not really fair -- the Vench 56% has long been my favorite low-percentage (under 60%) dark chocolate bar on the market.

Other than the Venchi, the two Aeschbach bars were expectedly amazing.  I especially liked the less fancy, 80% bar, though I am not sure if it is due to the less-fanciness or due to the higher percentage.

The SPAGnVOLA bar, though, was surprisingly excellent.  I had never heard of the company before, and they stacked up well with Aeschbach, which were one of my favorite companies from Zurich.  Pacari was bringing up the rear this time, likely because it was slightly fruitier than the others, but all four bars come recommended.

Bottom Line: Sometimes you hit the jackpot.  Most of those times are at 2 Beans.

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.

2 Beans: featuring Domori 100% Criollo, Domori Biancomenta, Domoro Velvet Cremini, Mitzi Blue 80%+90%, and Konnerup & Co. 70% Peppermint

So after the Ghiradelli tasting, Leila and I had only one thing on our minds: more chocolate.  So we went to 2 Beans, where we purchased about 100 chocolate bars:

2 Beans is a phenomenal place, by the way. They have gelato and a coffee bar and just shelf after shelf of brand after brand of chocolate bars, including many of our favorites that are usually hard to find, and including some that we had never even heard of before. That is why we had to buy so many.

Take a look at what goes on inside this store:

I mean, SERIOUSLY:

We started with the Mitzi Blue bar.  It was a large disc of 80% chocolate with caramalized chili nibs, and with a smaller disc of 90% chocolate embedded:

It was good, but the smaller disc seemed a bit unnecessary.  Leila and I are also not the biggest fans of spice, but I guess this one was really on us, since we bought the bar with the chili nibs.

We also got some Domori "velvet cremini."  I am still not sure exactly what they are, but they are soft and chocolatey and creamy and sweet and delicious.

The above is white chocolate, somehow.  Mint white chocolate.  I actually liked it, but obviously Leila did not.  She has no patience for that.  But if you like white chocolate and mint, the Domori bar is highly recommended.

Similarly the Domori 100% bar was great for what it was.  It was bitter, even for 100% bars, so Leila was not down, but I gobbled it up.

I think our consensus favorite, aside from the Cremini, was the Konnerup & Co. peppermint bar.  It was chocolatey and refreshing, and can go along with the many, many other delicious peppermint-dark chocolate bars out there.

Bottom Line: The real bottom line here is that 2 Beans is incredible.  Aside from the Meadow, which is geographically very far away, it has the best chocolate selection in NYC.  Truly global in its reach, with excellent taste.

Ghirardelli "Holidays in July" party and tasting

A few months ago, David and I went to a Ghirardelli party where we were introduced to a new line of Ghiradelli baking products which can be used to prepare Christmastime treats. We didn't write about it then because, hello, it was not Christmastime. But now it (almost) is!



Let me start by telling you something about my identity: I love Ghirardelli. I always have. I swear by their brownie recipe. The Ghirardelli Original Chocolate Cookbook was my first--and for many years my only--cookbook. I refuse to go on a trip without a bag of Ghirardelli semisweet chocolate chips in my carry-on luggage. So when they invited me to a party, I felt kind of like I was in high school and the girl I had always idolized had invited me to her kegger. Or something.



We showed up and there were savory passed appetizers. As you may recall from our chocolate seder, we have a particular interest in savory chocolate foods (though we always find that they are not chocolatey enough). At this party I ate turkey quesadillas with mole, and polenta with caponata and chocolate nibs. Tasty stuff, but I was mostly saving my appetite for the main attraction: desserts.



So Ghirardelli is launching a few new products, and they had baked for us to show us how these products could be used in the kitchen. Sissy Biggerton, a TV host and 'lifestyle expert,' was demonstrating. I don't exactly know what a lifetstyle host is, but it sounds like a great job, and I think I'd take it if somebody offered it to me. Apparently it involves hanging out with chocolate baked goods sometimes, so, I'm down.



One of the new Ghirardelli products is candy making and dipping wafers, in both white and dark chocolate. I am psyched about this because on occasion I have baked chocolate chip cookie dough truffles, but I can't do it very often because it's so hard to find chocolate candy making wafers. Now Ghirardelli is making these, which you can buy in a normal grocery store and melt in your microwave, so I have no excuse not to make cookie dough truffles all the time.

Also you can melt these wafers around a balloon and then remove the balloon and then you have an edible bowl, as per Sissy here:



One of the other new products is hot cocoa. Obviously Ghirardelli already made hot cocoa, which I know because I drink it just about every night before I go to bed. But now it is in a new package, and in addition to the Double Chocolate and Chocolate Mocha flavors, they have created a new Chocolate Caramel flavor.



Below you can see something else they fed us, a mandarin espresso hot cocoa sip. Maybe David should have drunk this, since now he likes coffee in his chocolate. Personally I liked the orange flavoring, but I still don't like espresso. I tried it, though. Bravely I tried it. For you, dear readers.



They also fed us--and gave us recipes for!--a dense, thick, delicious pumpkin spice chocolate cupcake; a lighter mint-chocolate cupcake; and a chocolate cookie with wonderful chocolate frosting. The idea behind this party was something about "small bites," like people will come to your holiday party and they will only want to eat bite-sized portions of your dessert dishes rather than sitting down with a huge hulking piece of cake and a fork. I like this in theory, though in practice it meant that I ate like five of those pumpkin spice cupcakes. Because they were small.

BOTTOM LINE: Ghirardelli is my favorite way to bring quality chocolate, hot cocoa, and baked goods into my home kitchen without going to a lot of trouble or expense. This party helped remind me of that. And I hope this post helps you with your upcoming Thanksgiving entertaining. Cheers!

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.