Chocolate @ No5

Hahndorf is an old German town nestled in the hills of Adelaide, South Australia and is more known for its kitsch souvenirs and dodgy looking sausages and sauerkraut than chocolate. However, earlier this year a new player emerged amongst the bee-sting cakes, the ugg boot makers and cuckoo clocks – Chocolate @ No5. Yeah, like Chanel, all classy and stuff.

Inside their cute little 1850s (which is considered very ‘old’ here in Ozstrayah) they have managed to combine serving top notch coffees and hot chocolates with selling an array of local and internationally renowned chocolates. Try Melbourne’s Chocolatier and Max Brenner, New York’s Marie Belle, Switzerland’s Alice Chocolate and our South Aussie Cocolat.

It was my birthday on the day I visited, so I just bought a whole assortment entirely based on appearances and the flavours that appealed to me. These included dark chili chocolate, strawberry, white choc lemon myrtle, bailey’s irish cream, champagne truffles, mint truffles, cointreau and peanut cups.

Interestingly, it is the milk chocolates that mostly win out here. Actually to be really honest, it is the white chocolate lemon myrtle truffle that is the stand out. It is the perfect combination of a hard outer shell and soft creamy flavour inside that would easily convert a white-chocolate naysayer.

The milk chocolate peanut cups were also delicious. It wasn’t a peanut butter filling, but finely chopped peanuts that still gave a really fresh nut flavour and almost merged with the chocolate itself. The strawberry centre was another milk chocolate champion that was divinely pale and creamy, melting too tantalizingly quickly. Perhaps the only so-so was the champagne truffle – yes it was milk chocolate, but any champagne flavour was imperceptible.

The dark chocolates tasted as though they were all from the Cocolat stable and their dark chocolate has a dull and stodgy taste in my opinion. The chilli was the only flavour that could quite literally fight through and leave a tingle – the other truffles were less successful in allowing their flavoured centres to escape the domination of ordinary dark chocolate coating the outside.

What was most appealing was the sample of a layered marzipan dark chocolate crafted especially for their store by Steven ter Horst, a chocolatier who has completed his training in France. His wares look as artistic as any by Max Brenner or Marie Belle and will be available at No5 in the new year. If they are all as good as the one owner Sophie Zervas gave me, there will soon be standing room only at this establishment.

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