Madecasse citrus and pink pepper bar

We got this Madecasse bar at Whole Foods. What makes Madecasse unique is that they not only harvest the cacao beans in Madagascar; they actually make the chocolate bars there, package them, the whole bit. What happens out of their Brooklyn factory is the distribution, not any of the chocolate-making.

According to this article I read about Madecasse:

Seventy percent of the world’s cocoa beans come from Africa, but less than one percent of the world’s chocolate is produced there. Most African cocoa winds up in chocolate factories in Belgium, Switzerland, and France.

There are people who farm cacao plantations who have never actually tasted chocolate, or, even if they have, they may not have tasted chocolate created from the beans that they're harvesting. This is why you can go to a country like Ecuador, which grows great cacao, and have trouble finding a decent bar of chocolate to eat. This is why Madecasse is special.



So, that's the sociopolitical background. The question now is: how's the chocolate?

Answer: it's interesting. The pepper is not too spicy, and it's not textural, either, but you can definitely taste it. It works well. The "combava fruit" advertised on the package is just a lime. This lends the bar an almost juicy taste, like biting into one of those pieces of gum that has a fruity liquid interior.

Overall, it was good, and unlike other bars. But it was not very chocolatey. I mean, it clearly was chocolate, but the flavor notes were not "chocolatey."

BOTTOM LINE: A tasty, unique bar, but without a strong chocolate flavor.

Vosges Marzipan Bar, Green Tea Bar, and Hot Chocolate

I stopped by the Vosges shop in Soho recently, and they are really just a solid company.

So the matcha green tea bar with spirulina was not the biggest hit.  I mean, it was ok.  But Roh-Kaolade did it better.  Still, it was interesting.

The marzipan bar was really excellent.  The marzipan was fresher and gooey-er than the Rittersport version.  The only downside was that it had a stronger taste, so that -- despite have a higher chocolate-to-marzipan quantity ratio than the Rittersport -- it did not have a substantially higher chocolate-to-marzipan taste ratio.

It should also be noted that Vosges makes excellent hot chocolate.  It is not thick like City Bakery's.  It is for drinking.  It is a drink.  That is ok.  It is delicious.  It tastes like chocolate.

Bottom Line: Vosges is great, because they do simple things really well but also have really wacky ideas that are usually worth a try.

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.

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.

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.

Mast Brothers dark chocolate with sea salt bar

You may be looking at this chocolate bar and thinking, "Well, that doesn't look all that attractive to me. That wrapper does't look like a jaunty shirt worn by Ralph Lauren on his sailboat." And to you I say, "That's because I tore through three-quarters of the bar before I stopped to take a photo. Of course it looks bedraggled now."



There is a LOT of sea salt in here, and it works great. It reminds me of what I like about dark chocolate pretzels. A great salty-sweet combo.

BOTTOM LINE: Mast Brothers does it again!

John & Kira's "Urban Garden Mint" 62%

I bought this on a whim, walking through Philadelphia.

Ok, I had sort of heard of them before.  Maybe because I googled chocolatiers in Philadelphia.  Maybe.

Anyways, it is very aptly named.  It tastes like a garden.

Bottom Line: If you want your mint chocolate to taste like a garden, you should buy this bar.