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.

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.

Baci Perugina Double Layer Candy Bar

You probably know Perugina from their famous Baci chocolate hazelnut-filled "kisses":


But they now have a NEW product, called a Baci double layer candy bar, and they sent us a few bars to try because they are awesome. So this package showed up in the mail:



What is inside the package? These things!



And what is inside that wrapping? This!



As you may have predicted from the name "double layer candy bar," these bars have, ahem, two layers. In the dark chocolate bars, one layer is dark chocolate, the other is hazelnut chocolate, and in the middle are actual hazelnuts. The milk chocolate bars are the same, only with a milk chocolate layer in place of the hazelnut layer.



The hazelnuts added a great textural element, making this extremely edible. I went through a bar much faster than I'd anticipated. It is very much for candy lovers: the chocolate is sweet and straightforward. Even the dark chocolate bars are only 51%, and they're counterbalanced by the gianduia layer, making this a bar that's much better for the milk chocolate fan than for someone looking for an intense dark chocolate flavor. I could see this going over big with the Toblerone crowd.

BOTTOM LINE: A classy candy bar perfect for fans of sweet chocolate, and of chocolate with pieces of hazelnut in it.