S. Worthen | Weblog

stephanieburgis has declared today to be Hot Chocolate Day, in honor of the publication of A Most Improper Boxed Set.

So it's been a good day for me to reminisce about what is still, in my memory, my favorite hot chocolate. Back when I lived in Toronto, JS Bonbons had a Queen Street outlet. It closed long ago (as did, last I checked, JS Bonbon's other shop, where I once threw snow balls at the second-story window to try to get the attention of the class I was meant to be attending but could find no way into).

The Queen Street shop made hot chocolate using truffle ganache. The same ganache they used to fill their truffles. They had three or four varieties. One was the extremely good white-chocolate-and-thyme one. The other was the absolutely amazing dark chocolate and lavender one.

Put it this way. I used to drag visiting friends there in the sweltering heat of August to try the wonders of their hot chocolate. That's how amazing it was.

Location: 18 Almeida Street in Islington, about a 10 minute's walk north of Angel. London.

For Chocolate Week, Almeida, a restaurant, coordinated with Paul A. Young, chocolatier, to create a three course menu for the second year running. We went with cwjat who, as it happens, is allergic to chocolate and so ordered off of the regular menu.

( Richly chocolatey, with a really nice bit of pork belly.... )

Service was helpful and good-natured, if stretched a little thin at peak service times. The kitchen's clearly doing good things, if not reliably so; but it's hard to tell with a special one-off collaborative menu, not refined over months or years of operation. The Chocolate Week menu was a good idea, but the results were more a work in progress than a polished work of art.

Alas, this proved true of my other attempt at a Chocolate Weke event. The Orangery at Kensington Palace promised a week of chocolate-themed afternoon tea, but failed to live up to its advertised Sunday opening hours; it was closed for a private event.

This was a one-off dinner, each course orchestrated by a different chef or chocolatier, in honor of the overlap of Chocolate Week in the UK and London's inaugural Restaurant Week. As a result of all the different agendas and personalities involved, it was only a coherent meal to the degree that each dish involved chocolate. To a degree, they were more in competition with each other than they were in harmony. As a result, I'll write about each dish separately.

( Six courses, all with chocolate, and a restaurant... )

In conclusion: I have no incentive to go back to the Amba Restaurant again. It disappointed me in a variety of ways, especially for a place which pretensions to fine dining. The dinner, however, had real highlights. It was an encouragement to use chocolate nibs regularly as, effectively a spice. I would love to learn more about cooking with chocolate pulp. And as a sampler of the restaurant, Launceston Place, the chicken & foie gras dish was a compelling invitation to try it out. All in all, a very mixed meal which would have worked better with better coordination, but was fundamentally a good idea.

Down in the plaza by Royal Festival Hall, a cluster of white tents offered up Southbank's first chocolate festival this weekend. Although clearly located near Easter, the event itself was remarkably Easter-free, focusing instead on good things that can be made with chocolate, primarily edible. Under clear, cool blue skies, the crowds swarmed for the tasters and the talks in the tent. I watched the savory cooking demonstration, cooked by a twelve year old to demonstrate simplicity; her chocolatier mother talked us through the chocolatey salad dressing and chocolate-infused leek, mushroom, and pan-fried lamb. In both cases, the recipes used 98% chocolate discs for convenience.

I hadn't had a lot of notice about the festival, but what made my decision for me was reading about Paul Wayne Gregory, a pastry chef who set up his own chocolate company recently, primarily targeted at the restaurant industry, although also available through direct order. His flavor choices were inspiring to read about, and even better to sample. Deirdre McCanny of Co Couture from Belfast was a real pleasure to chat with, and her Irish whiskey truffle had the right balance between the whiskey's personality and a light touch to win me over. Artistry in Cocoa (who'd also done the workshop) had some nicely vibrant brandy-rum-raisin truffles to sample. William Curley, always a favorite despite the demise of his dessert bar, offered samples of balsamic vinegar flavored truffles whose pure smoothness blew away most of the competition. Other stands included ones selling "raw" chocolate (i.e. not heated to over 40°C), bath and body products, and wine matched with chocolate bars.



Amazingly, lunch was available at the festival. I started with a gentle spicy chili, with a hint of chocolate in it, from Santa Fe Mexican Food, served on rice. The chili was good, but I was even more impressed with their sensible serving sizes and reasonable prices. The rest of my treats came from Ooh La La Chocolaterie. The first was an small tea cup of molded tasty dark chocolated, filled to order with a contrasting white chocolate ganache, and topped with fresh strawberries. It was an unusual concept, and beautifully executed, fun and lovely all together. I liked it so much I went back to try their hot chocolate, one of about half-a-dozen hot chocolate options at the event. The hot chocolate was pleasant, with a hint of cinnamon and other spice, but not quite as much fun as the chocolate cup had been.

Perhaps they'll do it again next year?

I haven't been back in a number of months, but its absence in the recent Metro article and now on the chocolatier's website makes it look like the William Curley Dessert Bar is now a thing of the past. Stupendous in its opening months, the last few times I went, their pastry chef hadn't been in - sick, down one and understaffed, and the like. Advised to call ahead to be sure desserts could be made to order, months passed and now it looks like it's gone.

Dear People in the UK,

Happy Chocolate Week! It starts today and lasts through Sunday.

Even if you can't attend any of the events, you maybe interested in some of the offers available with print-outable coupons. London is disproportionately represented, but there are chocolate shops in many other parts of the country offering events and coupons too.

The schedule for Chocolate Week in the UK (mostly in London) is up, if you'd like to plan ahead:

http://www.chocolate-week.co.uk/eventslist.php

Last night, I dreamed I stopped by a chocolate shop. They were very busy - lots of small individual tables with a single chair by each, like a classroom, but with café style. What made them so busy, however, was not only that they did table service, but that they provided a few samplers to everyone who came in. olander, who had recently started working there, brought me an impressive pile of samples, seven or so. I remember thinking that it was a small box's worth of truffles, and that I really hoped I liked them since I felt so obliged to purchase some now, with such a glut of generosity. He was busy, so didn't even pause long enough for me to thank him for it all.

So I tried them. The chili dark chocolate truffle was smooth, with flecks of sweet, gentle fire to it and a touch of cinnamon. Green tea white chocolate was a little too sweet, although the faint bitterness of the tea mostly cut through the sweetness of the white chocolate. The jasmine dark chocolate truffle had the depth, richness, and complication of jasmine tea rather than the delicate sweetness of jasmine flowers. A cinnamon milk chocolate truffle was brimful of piquancy, smooth, intense, robust spiciness which was rounded out with hints of clove.

Now if only I knew where the shop was located....

Location: 32-34 Shepherd Market. Mayfair, London. W1J 7QN.

I can't stop smiling. I feel so utterly happy with the world after four hours of loitering around the (fairly) new Dessert Bar opened by William Curley in Mayfair in November. Between leisurely dessert consumption, good company, idly waiting on a friend to figure out her plans and whether or not she was meeting us there, and the endless entertainment of watching and chatting with a patissier at work, the late afternoon proved an idyll of sweets.

rosamicula and I started by perching at chairs by the dessert bar's cooking area and ordering from the dessert menu (as opposed to the pastry menu or ordering truffles). The dessert menu items come with a pre-dessert, a little chocolate-mint soup, tasting of fresh mint without its texture, and crowned with chantilly cream and chocolate shavings. It was light and refreshing, a palate cleanser before the main course. My tarte au chocolat was filled with a moody dark chocolate, smooth and rather bitter, dusted with gold and accompanied with refreshing raspberries and the most delicate and un-bitter of green tea ice creams, fresh from Paco Jet treatment. rosamicula's mille feuille featured elegantly thin sheets of chocolate sandwiching chantilly cream and a sponge base; a lovely little salad of skinned wonderfully ripe orange segments with yuzu syrup; a ball of orange cream ice cream; and a fluffy seed-shaped topping of chocolate mousse.

Even though we had seen the desserts being made, it was still magical seeing all their multitude of parts and pieces come together into the presentation. It really was cooking as entertainment and continued to be as we loitered. While the pastry chef practiced for a professional competition next week, we chatted about mutual friends and events. Eventually, we had after dessert drinks, a bitter coffee for her, a smooth hot chocolate for me. And a while after that, we gave into temptation and had another course from the sales counter, an excitement of fruit in the form of a tart for me, accompanied by a fresh mint infusion, and a fluff of cream for her in the form of a Mont Blanc. They were small and light and refreshing.

It grew dark, and our third person wasn't coming anymore, so we slowly wrapped up our time there. A truffle, slow-melting, flavored with Japanese vinegar, gentle and appealing, made one last treat for the road. We wandered out in a daze of sugar and delight, certain we'll be back.

Tuesday - Rococo organized an hour's talk at the Natural History Museum, a visit to Britain's oldest cocoa pod. It was brought back as part of a collection of Jamaican plants, part of Sir Hans Sloane's systematics collection. Linnaeus, when Sloane was old, worked through Sloane's collection as part of his systematization work. The curators were chatty and friendly. One had made photocopies for us of Sloane's report on the cocoa plant, description and drawings from the sample. She apologized for bits of Latin at the end of each passage.

Friday - I visited Paul A. Young's new shop, his second, opened in an outside shop at the Royal Exchange, right by Bank. It's all antique dark wood and high shelves, a tight spiral staircase at the back, presumably leading to storage, a vintage Victorian shop at heart. Paul himself was manning the shop, which only opened this past Monday. As usual, I gave in to a selection of truffles.

Saturday - C., taldragon, and two of her friends joined us for a day of chocolating around London. Many of the city's chocolate shops were holding events in honor of Chocolate Week.

( William Curley at the new John Lewis foodhall on Oxford Street... )

( Sampling at Demarquette... )

( Coconut ice cream at Rococo.... )

( L'artisan du chocolat - 'For Chocolate and For Country'... )

Tired from a full afternoon of hard chocolate eating, we took our leaves and went home. We may have some chocolate in the house now.

( Footnote.... )