Notting Hill’s Melt Chocolates has long been one of my favourite chocolate shops, although its location has meant that I don’t get to visit it anywhere near as often as I would like.
Last week I was invited along to get a sneak peek at their Christmas range, which has been inspired by a ‘Byzantium’ theme, with lots of Eastern symbolism and jewel like colours. Melt will have a range of Christmas themed products which we’ll cover closer to the time, but one of the interesting decisions they made was not to concentrate too much on traditional ‘Christmas’ themed flavours. Instead, they’re keeping their most popular flavours, but presenting them as hand painted jewel like chocolates. They have the Christmas look, but inside are the popular flavours that regular Melt customers know and love.
I think this is the perfect Christmas gift for the slightly conservative Notting Hill locals who form the bulk of Melt’s customers. They want beautiful, quality Christmas gifts, but are less interested in experimental flavours.
The chocolates I have here are part of Melt’s standard range – not in their Christmas outfits – but as we haven’t actually reviewed the fresh chocolate range before, I thought now would be as good a time as any!
Of course, the first thing you’ll notice is just how pretty they are. Each chocolate is handmade on site by head chocolatier Chika Watanabe and her staff, and while there’s a lot of different formats, they all look beautiful.
I’m not going to review each chocolate here, but instead just pick out some of my own favourites. Starting with one of their best sellers – a simple vanilla bonbon in dark chocolate, with a sprinkling of pink sea salt on top.
You might not think a vanilla flavour chocolate would be very interesting, but Melt use the whole vanilla pod in these chocolates for an intense, fresh vanilla flavour. Vanilla is often added to chocolate to hide bad flavours, so we sometimes forget what a wonderful flavour it can be when it’s the star of the show. The sea salt really lifts the flavour and the dark chocolate shell counteracts some of the sweetness. Melt also do a version of this in a white chocolate shell, but I recommend going for the dark version myself.
The red, white & blue gianduja dome was made to celebrate the Jubilee & Olympics, and was interesting as we got to see how they effect is achieved. Coloured cocoa butter is painted onto the inside of the mould and left to set before another colour is added. Finally, dark chocolate is poured into the mould and the chocolate is made as usual, with the design becoming part of the chocolate itself, rather than looking like it has been painted on. Clever.
Another of my favourites is the pistachio marzipan. As a child, I didn’t particularly like marzipan, but it’s something I’ve grown to love lately. I’ve always loved pistachio, and when they’re paired together, the result is a wonderfully creamy chocolate that works perfectly with the 66% dark chocolate. I could eat these all day.
Every other chocolate in this box is made to the same standard, but rather than me go on about them, I think you should just try them for yourself. I highly recommend making the journey to the Notting Hill store if you can, but if not they also have concessions in Selfridges Oxford Street, Lidgates in Holland Park and Whole Foods in Kensington. Plus you can buy them online. So you’ve really got no excuse!
Chocolate by word of mouth is one of the best forms of communication; by it, I was able to learn, even in my uncharacteristically long hiatus from visiting World Market, that they had a 99% cacao bar in stock. What I didn’t know until I arrived in worshipful stance in front of the chocolate aisle was that this bar is part of World Market’s own range. While I have mixed feelings on this range, it does provide easy availability and low prices, neither of which is typical for a bar of this high cocoa content. So even though I was only planning on running in and out of the store for candles, naturally I had also to bring with me a chocolate possessing such potential.
The problem with my impromptu chocolate-seeking was getting the chocolate safely home: I had my bike with me and thought the bar would survive a fifteen minute ride home, but that was a foolish supposition. The edges melted a little and so I’m unable to evaluate the chocolate’s shine – yet I rather like its slightly melted design. It’s a clean enough melting that it looks artsy.
Starting with the flavor notes was promising: “Intensely bold, irresistibly rich and as dark as it gets with slight notes of black currant in the finish.” A deep, not bitter, aroma plays toward the simplicity of Ghirardelli. Breaking apart one of the eight squares reveals a flesh velvety and red-toned, like a dense brownie. Alluring.
On the tongue, though, the chocolate brings a slight bitter wave. Its feeling is a bit dusty, though not so much as in Lindt’s 99% offering. At this point, you pass a barrier of coughing, shaking bitterness that threatens to strangle you. Beyond the barrier, smoother territory emerges where you begin to taste a bit of the black fruits/berries. The finish is lovingly warm and red, accompanied by the dissipation of bitterness.
My second piece (only one fourth of a square) hit with less initial bitterness since the bitterness was already in my mouth, and its bitter barrier only made me wince and grimace. Again, the finish, coming like a whispering sigh, was the best part. Perhaps it was a sort of “I have conquered and victory is sweet” reaction?
This isn’t the best 90% or above chocolate I have had, but it also isn’t the worst. I’m impressed by its texture–it held together much better than did Lindt’s offering, and I also found it less bitter than that bar. Add in the two dollar price and easy (U.S.) accessibility and you have a good deal. Probably I won’t be buying it again any time soon, but World Market has come out with a great opportunity for trying out a decently made, high percentage chocolate.
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Cocoa Loco, so I was a little surprised when a selection of bars turned up on my doorstep featuring entirely new packaging. I was even more surprised when I visited their stall at the Speciality & Fine Food Fair over the weekend to find a large chocolate slab with “Chocablog” written on it produly displayed on the stand.
The slab is now our Facebook page cover image, and while we can’t be bought with chocolate, it’s not something we’re going to refuse either!
The updated Cocoa Loco packaging is really rather good. The boxes are simple, clean and elegant with a little window on the back that shows the chocolate inside.
The dark chocolate in this bar is a robust 73% cocoa solids from the Dominican Repuplic, and has a robust flavour to match. It’s both organic and Fairtade, but it doesn’t have a lot of subtlety to it. I think some might find it a little too dark.
The sunflower seeds and sea salt on the other hand, work perfectly. The seeds have a wonderful texture and give a slightly nutty flavour to the chocolate, and the sea salt does manage to lift the flavour of the chocolate to a point where some sweetness does start to come through.
The flavour of the bar as a whole does actually change significantly depending on how you eat it. If you can resist biting into it and just let it melt away slowly before crunching the seeds, you get a lot more sweetness from the chocolate. The trouble is, all those delicious seeds make it quite difficult to resist munching.
Overall, I do like this chocolate, but I think I would love a milk chocolate version. I tried a couple of Cocoa Loco’s milk and white chocolate offerings at Speciality and they were wonderful. I particularly liked the honey & sesame seed milk chocolate which had the flavour and texture of a high-end Toblerone. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to pick a bar up, but I’ll certainly be hunting one down!
This 70g slab of French chocolate from Chocolats de Pauline was given to me a while ago and I was hanging onto it so I could share it with a friend who has a severe lactose intolerance. You see, this rather lovely looking slab of chocolate is made with just two ingredients – cacao & sugar. What’s more, those ingredients are 100% Organic, making it one of the ‘purest’ chocolates I have tasted in quite a while. Crack open the rather elegant gold box & inside you find a simple yet elegant slab of dark chocolate with a cacao pod motif embossed in the larger square.
Before we get to tasting, I should tell you about the smell of this bar. It’s purity makes for some great cacao aromas – rich red fruits and floral high notes with that dark, rich undercurrent of cacao which promise great things. On the palate those aromas are amplified beautifully, and as the chocolate melts there’s a lovely acidity which precedes the rich, fruity darkness of the cacao. It’s a 70% cacao chocolate which means that the darker, more robust flavours are kept in check by the organic cane sugar which lends that slightly molasses-like sweetness to the chocolate.
As I said previously, it’s been a while since I tasted chocolate made so simply. Just two ingredients (well three if you want to divide ‘cacao’ into cacao paste and cacao butter) which can only deliver the real essence of the bean. From the initial acidity through the developing flavours of red fruits and light licorice to the lingering light, clean finish, I found myself thoroughly enjoying this, and I don’t believe this was entirely due to a recent lack of top notch chocolate.
This bar (or a version thereof) is available to buy from www.saveursetnature.com and at €4.95 it’s also rather good value for money. From the looks of things ‘Chocolats de Pauline’ is now ‘Saveurs et Nature’. I can only hope that only the packaging has been changed.
