A Chocolate Tour of New York

How many times have you dreamed of eating and drinking your weigh in chocolate? Just think of chocolate as that sweet, creamy, smooth, rich, and yes, American taste. Do you like it white? Dark? Sweet? Semi-sweet? Bittersweet? Unsweetened? Milky? With caramel and tons of nuts? Melted on a velvety scoop of ice cream? On your favorite crunchy pretzels? If your mouth is watering by now, you should take my Chocolate Tour of New York.

Friday, February 23, 2007

New York Chocolate Tours



A New Way to Discover Sophisticated, Gourmet New York

Chocolate Zoom, the monthly online magazine for worldly chocoholics, has launched the New York Chocolate Tours. Its ambition is to inform, delight and reveal to the chocolate lovers some of the most sophisticated and creative chocolate shops in the city. Whether they are local stores or branches of international brands, these shops sell some of the best flavors and most imaginative bonbons.

Only in the last decade has chocolate truly been discovered, appreciated and resurrected to a higher status than a simple sugar fix. New York, as the cosmopolitan, trendy city that it is, saw a dramatic increase in chocolatier per square mile in the past ten years. Well-known European brands flocked to open outposts here in the center off all things modern and Americans that caught the virus of the cacao bean trained abroad and brought back their knowledge in creating successful businesses.

But in a city so big, how do you discover the crème de la crème of Gothamists chocolate masters by yourself, how do you know which reviews to believe and how do you organize your itinerary if youre in the city for a limited amount of time or if youre a native always on the run? Theres nothing easier. Let someone else do it for you with professionalism and youll be introduced to a world of finesse and delightful taste without lifting a finger. Well, youll have to walk a lot, but you know what they say, no pain, no gain. And lets face it: a bit of mileage is not all that bad as you will burn out the calories ingested in the stores where there are plenty of samples waiting for you.

Michel Richart, a French master chocolatier and the founder of RichArt Paris, was more than intrigued by the idea when he was first contacted by Chocolate Zoom for an interview. He actually offered to lead a tour himself and take the choco-tourists around when he visits New York.