Last week, I was invited along to sample chocolate afternoon tea at The Podium Restaurant in The London Hilton on Park Lane. Being the kind of person who never says no to an invitation with “chocolate” in the title, I grabbed the nearest chocolate expert, and headed down to see what was on offer.
We ended up with much more than we bargained for, sampling three different variations on the ‘chocolate afternoon tea’ theme.
Usuallly, the restaurant offers afternoon tea with a selection of dark chocolate cakes and treats, but we started our journey with a white chocolate version – something that’s being laid on specifically for this year’s Chocolate Week in October.
After being offered champagne and a selection of beautiful teas from Harney & Sons to choose from, we were presented with sandwiches. Five, simple open sandwiches to be precise.
The sandwiches were nice enough, but a little plain (especially compared with what was to come). The ‘fillings’ were fine, but the bread wasn’t much to write home about. Had I known just how much I was about to consume, I would probably have skipped the sandwich course. But you probably won’t be consuming quite as much as we did.
After the sandwiches, we were presented with an array of scones, cupcakes and wonderful white chocolate fancies that looked amazing.
We started with the scones, which came in plain and chocolate chip varieties and were served with a beautiful strawberry jam, fresh cream and a white chocolate ganache. They were deliciously light and melted effortlessly in the mouth. It was tempting to eat them all, but we had a lot to get through, so we quickly moved on to the miniature chocolate fancies.
The plate – made of coloured white chocolate and completely edible – was covered in a range of beautiful white chocolate creations, including a chocolate teapot, a marshmallow and ganache filled ice cream cone, and white chocolate macaroons. Some of these were more successful than others, but a lot of that comes down to personal taste.
The ‘regular’ and ‘Halloween’ themed chocolate teas come with a similar variety of goodies, but are made with 70% dark chocolate (Valrhona is used, throughout). I’m not going to describe each creation individually, as that would take several thousand words, but take a look at the photo gallery below and you’ll get the idea.
The fourth course – again, on an edible chocolate plate- was the cupcake course. If you ask me, every meal should have a cupcake course, especially when they look as good as these.
Normally, you get two cupcakes per person, and they look amazing. We also sampled the the cakes from the regular afternoon tea and Halloween tea, and in general, the lighter, plain sponge versions were the nicest. The spooky dark chocolate Halloween cakes looked great, but the chocolate sponge was a little dry. This, of course, was a problem that was easily rectified with the addition of jam and clotted cream from the scone course, but it’s part of the reason the white chocolate tea was the best of the bunch for me.
You probably won’t go through all three themed afternoon teas in a single sitting, and you probably won’t make quite as much mess as we did either. But whichever one you go for, I think you’ll enjoy it.
The standard (“Confessions of a Chocoholic”) chocolate afternoon tea at The Podium Restuarant, London Hilton on Park Lane costs £22.50 per person (or £29.50 with champagne), with the white chocolate and Halloween themed afternoon teas costing £25 per person. Considering what you get, I think this is great value for money, and a very pleasant way for any chocolate lover to spend an afternoon.
I’d highly recommend getting yourself down there 11th-17th October to try it for yourself.
Photo Gallery
New Mexico being just next door, Santa Fe has become a biennial retreat for my family. In such an artistic community as it is, it follows that there are also a couple of good-quality chocolate shops in the area. Chocolate, however, not being most conducive to traveling, especially in the Southwest, I walked away with only two chocolate items.
This box I picked up at a shop on the Plaza, Yippee Yi Yo. If you couldn’t tell from the name, there is a decidedly tourist flair about the place, yet for novelty products, their quality is generally reasonable. Hence, it was hard to tell on what side of the scale a $12 wooden box of “Cowboy Chocolates” would go. There is no company mentioned on the label; it simply states they were made for the store.
The box may be cheap wood, but it is wood, complete with branding on the lid, which all contribute to the appeal for me. Only downside for us who keep boxes like this is that the lid isn’t on hinges; that may be nitpicking, anyway.
There are sixteen chocolates inside, which I shared over an evening of downtime at the hotel. Thoughts on them were generally pleasant, though everyone was avoiding the white chocolates — less of those should’ve been included. There were no dark chocolates at all, so they obviously weren’t targeting connoisseurs.
The milk chocolate used is standard, sweet and slightly dull — the cocoa percentage must be very low. It’s no wonder there was no interest in the white chocolate: it wasn’t good enough to win over the unaccustomed. As I’m sure you can guess, all of these chocolates are all very sweet.
I was glad for the Huckleberry just to get a taste of it in chocolate again, yet I wasn’t overly fond of the sugar crystals I found in the Cherry Chocolate. The Chocolate Covered Mixed Nuts had small pieces of most unimpressive nuts in milk chocolate. The same goes for the almonds in the Almond Bark, though those at least weren’t tiny pieces. The Huckleberry Bark was odd. White chocolate with frightening ice-blue dotted around. It tastes more like artificial blueberry than huckleberry.
Conclusion: they are tourist chocolates. I’d had my fingers crossed that they would be better, but they’re okay. Nothing except maybe the quantity of white chocolate would keep the average vacationing group from enjoying them as a quick sweet like we did.
I was recently invited to an Italian themed ‘tasting’ evening by the lovely Rafaella Baruzzo (she of the amazing Sicilian Lemons in chocolate fame), and at the end of the evening I was given a few things to take home and review.
This is one of two Vestri bars I received, and it’s a handmade single origin bar which uses 71% Dominican Republic cocoa from (I assume) the Hacienda Vista Allgre. Vestri are based in Arezzo, Tuscany, and as far as I can tell do not yet have a UK distributor for their products (although I suspect Baruzzzo chocolates might be a potential supplier). A little research tells me that the Vestri family business is now in it’s second generation, and that the beans used for this bar are grown on a plantation owned by the family. The beans are then shipped to Arezzo for processing. There are no chemicals or pesticides used during the growing of the cacao, but the finished product doesn’t have any organic certification on it (I know not why).
I cannot recall ever having sampled single origin Dominican Republic cocoa before, so I was quite keen to get inside the rather attractive box.
On the nose this chocolate exudes light, fragrant notes of leather and citrus, almost sweet and very powerful. The chocolate isn’t too glossy to look at but still has a good snap to it.
The really interesting stuff happens when this chocolate meets the palate. The first set of flavours is amazingly light and complex. An almost honey-like sweet top note from the cane sugar mingles with the citrussy, floral flavours of the cocoa. The chocolate remains light on the palate, melting quickly (almost reminiscent of some of the raw chocolate I’ve sampled) with a very smooth, light mouthfeel. It leaves the palate totally clean and ready for the next bite. And the next. I did wonder if the sweetness might be too much, but repeat tastings suggest that not all of that sweetness is down to the cane sugar – the cocoa seems to have it’s own sweet flavour which amplifies the flavours of the cane sugar. In some ways it reminded me of the Australian Handmade honey bar I reviewed a year or two ago, although such a comaprison does seriously understate the complex flavours offered here.
For a 71% cocoa dark chocolate this really does have an amazingly light texture and mouthfeel. Every time I tried a piece the honey notes were there at the start, slowly giving way to the fragrant cocoa which had that wonderful, slightly sharp citrus taste with darker undertones of semi-sweet cacao always bubbling away underneath.
Based on this showing, I’d say that Vestri was definitely a company to keep an eye out for, and I do hope that someone (preferably Rafaella Baruzzo) starts selling this stuff in the UK.
Yesterday evening, we were invited along to a cheese and chocolate pairing evening at La Cave à Fromage in Kensington.
“Cheese and chocolate!?” I hear you cry, “Are you mad!?”. Well, quite possibly, but it’s not as odd as it may at first seem. After all, you’d eat a chocolate cheesecake, wouldn’t you?
The event was organised by Chocolate Consultant Louise Thomas (you see here speaking and read an interview with her here), and featured five pairs of cheeses and chocolates, which we tried individually, then together.
Here’s the menu. Each cheese & chocolate was paired in the order you see, starting with the Bleu de Basque and Askinosie white chocolate.
That was certainly an interesting combination. The Askinosie has a slightly grainy texture and isn’t something I particularly loved on it’s own, and to my mind, was actually improved by tasting it with the blue cheese.
The second pairing was my favourite. A cheddar, and a 40% Valrhona milk chocolate. The cheddar was slightly dry and crumbly, and the the chocolate was very creamy. Together, the textures worked really well, and the flavours complemented each other, with the saltiness of the cheese enhancing the flavours in the chocolate.
The other pairings were also interesting, but none worked quite as well as the cheddar & milk chocolate for me. The final offering, was an interesting choice – the Gratte Paille, a very soft, creamy cheese was paired with a 100% Valrhona. Of course, the 100% chocolate has no sugar, so this wasn’t sweet in any way, but neither was it bitter. I’m not sure I would have come up with that combination myself, but it was certainly interesting.
For me, the biggest surprise was that none of the pairings tasted bad. Cheese and chocolate certainly can go together, despite what you might think. The successfulness of the pairings varied (something which is, of course, purely subjective), but it was always clear to see why a particular chocolate had been chosen to go with each cheese.
All in all, an extremely enjoyable evening. If you get a chance to try something like this, I highly recommend it. And if you happen to be a cheese lover in the London area, get yourself down to La Cave à Fromage – it’s an amazing place.
Photo Gallery
