New York City has captured my heart.The quaint boutiques and shops…The adorable atmosphere and cozy feel of the city streets…The chocolate!
That’s right, my dear readers. My first day in New York City was spent the right way! My mom is a pro at finding great deals online and she found a Groupon we simply could not resist. A chocolate tour of NYC! It’s a walking tour of various neighborhoods including Chelsea, Meatpacking District, West Village, and SoHo! I absolutely LOVED this tour, even though it was pretty cold, windy, and a bit rainy at times, I had a wonderful time. Having all this amazing chocolate samples definitely shifted my mood toward the positive that day.
The meeting place was at Chelsea Market, in the middle of Chelsea and Meatpacking District of New York City. We decided to take the subway to the area and it was thankfully easy to figure out. Chelsea Market is an awesome foodie spot. It has a ton of different bake shops, bakeries, restaurants, and some other kinds of stores. Before the tour started, my mom and I took a short trip through the Chelsea Market to see what was in there… there are some lovely shops. So cute. I love local stores so this was very cool. Apparently, Chelsea Market used to be a Nabisco Biscuit factory back in the day. It currently has various offices updates for some great companies, including Food Network, Oxygen Network, and more.
Anyway, the tour began at Jacques’ Hot Chocolate Bar in Chelsea Market. The hot chocolate we were to sample apparently had a whole variety of spices in it, including cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander, chili (or was it jalapeno?) and some others. It’s hard to remember, it was kind of information overload. All I was focused on was the fact that the last time I had hot chocolate was when I did a crafts night 3 months ago, so my mouth was salivating with just the mere thought of it.
I was ready for some hot cocoa goodness.
And guess what? This was the best hot chocolate I have ever freaking tasted. I am not exaggerating here. Sure, I’m no hot cocoa connouseir and I don’t drink it very often but as a self-acclaimed chocoholic, I know a good hot chocolate when I taste one.. and this is one darn good hot chocolate! Seriously, it was so incredibly creamy and thick. The spice was just enough to touch on my palate but it was not overpowering. The complexity of spices did a perfect job with accenting the sweetness of the hot chocolate. Man, was it good! I wish we had some more. This hot chocolate is a MUST!
Next, we ventured outside to continue our walking tour of New York’s chocolate goodness. Our next stop was at Li-Lac Chocolates. They had some cute chocolate molds in the windows, including an adorable display they did for a wedding that included shoes made out of chocolate.
The samples we got to try from Li-Lac’s was a 70% dark chocolate piece and a buttercream toffee crunch kind of candy (not chocolate). The dark chocolate was okay, I enjoyed the toffee crunch better although it was very hard (and crunchy) and super sweet. I liked the stuff they had inside too and they had a great sale on Easter chocolates for buy one, get one free. We took advantage 🙂
The third stop was only a block away at the Chocolate Bar. This was my mom’s favorite of all the places we visited.
We tried a 60% dark chocolate with sea salt and a spiced milk chocolate. It’s weird, the milk chocolate one tasted slightly like mocha at first and had a very slight tinge of spice. I wasn’t a big fan of the sea salt chocolate, simply because I’m not a fan of sea salt in my desserts. There are exceptions though. My mom felt the same. She was obsessed with the milk chocolate we tried though and she claims that she doesn’t usually even like milk chocolate!
The fourth stop was Magnolia Bakery. This super popular bake shop actually came to Chicago about a year ago so I was already familiar with it. I was actually not very impressed with the cupcakes I had at the Chicago location. However…
These cupcakes were SO good!
Yes. They were fattening. I could taste the butter. They were super moist and sweet… but so darn delicious!
I was one happy camper, I loved this switch up from the regular chocolate bites we were getting. You know me and cupcakes… Love. It’s love.
Next up was Milk & Cookies which is known for their…. you guessed it, they are known for their cookies! And since we are on a Chocolate Tour, we got to try the Double Chocolate cookie.
It was a dark chocolate cookie with milk chocolate chips, it was freshly baked with a slightly crisp outside and a gooey and soft inside. It was dreamy.
However, after eating the Magnolia’s cupcake just a couple of minutes before, I was only able to have a few bites of the cookie. Saving this baby for later to nommz on. Prolonging the pleasure, ohhh yeah 😉
We then went to Pasticceria Bruno Bakery & Cafe. This was the first and only bake shop that was actually pretty big. Every other was… well, it was pretty much a shoebox. Pasticceria Bruno, however, could easily seat about 30 people. This is also the time in our journey where my camera started giving up on me because of the cold and I could no longer see how the photos were turning out. Darn camera. So the photo of the cannoli we got to try is pretty bad…
It tasted good though! It was my first time having a cannoli and it was a good experience. Very creamy inside with some chocolate chips. It was too sweet for me though and I was already pretty full with all the chocolate so I probably would have liked it a lot more if I wasn’t so full (it sucks but THANK YOU to intuitive eating for teaching me how to listen to my body’s cues and knowing when I’ve had enough to eat).
We bought some baked goods here because they were very reasonably priced and looked like they could be good. And no, we didn’t buy the wild fun cakes you see above. I wish, haha.
Last stop on our lovely chocolate tour of NYC was at Vosges in SoHo and I have no photos to show you of the goji berry chocolate we had there because they forbid photography in store. Yeah, kinda weird. I guess they had people wanting to copy their designs for chocolate or something so now they don’t allow people to take pictures of it. Well, whatever.
The chocolate was decent but I couldn’t really taste the goji berries at all. It wasn’t spectacular and I have no idea why they charge such an insane amount of money for them. I think it was $29 for 12 pieces of chocolate that are SMALL. Umm yeah, maybe one day when I’m a millionaire.
So that’s our chocolate tour of New York City. It was informative. It was delicious. It was fun! I had a great time and I recommend anyone who likes chocolate to do it!
Kammie wants to know:
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Have you ever done a food-focused tour?
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What’s your favorite kind of chocolate?
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What is the best chocolate you have ever tasted? (company, brand, place, whatever)
Let me know in the comments below!
