Chocolate hits

Personally, I don’t really care for candy or chocolate, but a friend of mine thinks of it in the same terms that I do for beer.
Anyone know of a place to buy good chocolates like at Sees?

You know, I think I’ve seen See’s candies here, some vendor in the halls at Asiaworld or some place like that. Or was it Jelly Bellies? There’s definitely a chocolate place at Eslite/Dun Hwa. Haven’t tried them but they look yummy. I have a box of See’s lollies here at home but they’re mine mine mine.

I think See’s is long gone. I wish they had Ethel M’s here. Nothing like chocolate made in the hot Nevada desert.

There’s a brand called Mary’s, I believe, which you can get in Sogo-type stores. Or, tell your friend to go to the Duty Free store at the Regent for Godiva and the like. The Regent, Far Eastern, and Landis do pretty good chocolates as well.

According to the Godiva Web site you can get their chocolate at the following locations:

Taipei
Breeze Centre
G/F, Breeze Centre
No. 39 Fuxing South Rd.
Section 1
(886) 2-877-21370
(886) 2-877-21379

Taipei
Asia World
Shop 1-2B
Asia World Mall
337 Nanjing East Rd.
Section 3
(886) 2-877-06920
(886) 2-877-06921

Taipei
Far East
1/F
Far East Shopping Mall
No. 203 Tun Hua South Rd.
Section 2
(886) 2-378-6666 ext 6450

Hsinchu
Windance
Shop M17-18
Windance Mall
245 Chung-Yang Rd.
(886) 3-575-5658
(886) 3-515-5657

[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]Personally, I don’t really care for candy or chocolate, but a friend of mine thinks of it in the same terms that I do for beer.
Anyone know of a place to buy good chocolates like at Sees?[/quote]

Wolf,

Look at this article in the NYT:

[quote]CHOCOLATE is the next coffee," confided one importer. “Chocolate is the new olive oil,” said a chocolatier. “Chocolate now is where cheese was 10 years ago,” a pastry chef asserted.

In the beginning, there was wine. And there were wine tastings and wine snobs and wine-of-the-month clubs. Then olive oil, vinegar, cheese, coffee and butter followed into the American culinary consciousness. Now the appreciation of fine chocolate seems poised to become the next gastronomic parlor game.

In New York, the proof is in the real estate: at least a dozen new boutique chocolatiers have opened here since 2000. Whether bars or bonbons, chocolate that is carefully created for flavor without regard to shelf stability or even popular appeal is hitting the radar of food-alert New Yorkers.

At Bierkraft in Park Slope, you can buy “flights” of chocolate for tastings that illustrate the different nuances of Ecuadorean, Ivoirian and Venezuelan cocoa beans.

At Dean & DeLuca, chocolates made by Michael Recchiuti come with instructions: “We suggest a pairing with still spring water.” Dean & DeLuca also stocks the world’s first chocolate identified by a “vintage” year: the Valrhona Chuao, made with cocoa beans grown in a single region of Venezuela.

Chocolate connoisseurship is indulged nationally on Web sites like chocophile.com, whose owner, Clay Gordon, can’t keep up with the demand for Italian-made Amedei Porcelana, perhaps the world’s most expensive chocolate at $90 a pound.

“Chocolate is a relatively affordable obsession,” Mr. Gordon said. “The most expensive bottle of wine is way out of most people’s reach; the most expensive bottle of balsamic vinegar costs more than a thousand dollars. But the most expensive chocolate bar costs only $9.”

At Chocolate Bar, a Greenwich Village storefront that calls itself a candy store for grown-ups, New Yorkers have the luxury of choosing among bars of perfectly plain chocolate containing 60 percent, 72 percent or 85 percent cocoa mass, the pure, unsweetened content of the cocoa bean. Fanatics are devoted to Michel Cluizel’s super-bitter Noir Infini, which is 99 percent pure cocoa mass, even though 85 percent is considered the upper limit of palatability for most mortals.

Matt Lewis, an owner of Chocolate Bar, said, “We’ve been amazed by how many people come in off the street asking about cocoa mass and couverture,” the fine baking chocolate used by chocolatiers and pastry chefs. “People are really paying attention.”

In the United States, the use of top-quality European chocolate has been steadily trickling down from pastry chefs and chocolatiers to home cooks. In New York, Jean-Georges Vongerichten put the French manufacturer Valrhona on the map in the early 1990’s by listing its chocolate on the menu as the base for his molten chocolate cake. Bernard Duclos, chief operating officer of Valrhona USA, said sales of Valrhona in this country have doubled in the last five years, though Valrhona costs two to four times more than American-made baking chocolate. Other European manufacturers, notably Michel Cluizel and Callebaut, are elbowing their way into the market, while American makers like Scharffen Berger and Guittard are trying to hold on to their small home-court advantage.

So is using Valrhona instead of Baker’s in your brownie recipe an expensive affectation, or a stroke of genius? What is the real difference between the $9.95 Belgian truffles stacked up on pallets at Costco, and the $58 Swiss truffles that the haughty salesclerks at Teuscher may deign to sell you?

Each manufacturer’s couverture has its own distinct flavor profile. “Once you’ve been tasting chocolate for 20 years, you can identify it blindfolded,” said Andrew Shotts, the owner of Garrison Confections of Providence, R.I., and a veteran New York pastry chef. “Valrhona is higher in acid, with a taste of red fruit like cherries. Cluizel is more earthy and raw. Guittard is very smooth. They all have their uses in the kitchen.”

Read the rest here:

nytimes.com/2003/12/03/dinin … 2c&ei=5070[/quote]

I went to the Chocolate Bar while in NYC this past December to buy chocolate for my wife and secretaries… it was really good (we sampled some of it when we were drinking the Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout that I brought back from NYC… mmmmmmmm). The girl at Chocolate Bar told me to get Mary’s Chocolate from Japan… I found some in Narita airport on the way back to Taiwan… again, really good. I see Flicka mentioned Mary’s above too.

I just bought a small box of Venezuela Bitter dark chocolates at Breeze (it looks like its made or distributed by Morinaga… but the brand name is Carre de chocolat). Also very good, if you like bitter sweet. Has a high cocao bean mass. My wife too gives it a thumbs up.

Tigerman, where in Breeze did you get the chocolate? Thaks.

Candy Aisle in the grocery store in the basement.

You have to look closely… there is a lot of japanese chocolate… this particular chocolate is significantly more bitter than most dark chocolate I’ve had (except for the good stuff from NYC and Mary’s from Japan). But this Venezuela Bitter is quite good.

The German bakery at Breeze now has VALRHONA chocolates. They have both Carre de Guanaja and Carre de Caraibe. Both are bitter dark chocolates made with respective minimums of 70% (Carre de Guanaja) and 66% (Carre de Caraibe) cocao. Valrhona is one of the world’s finest chocolatiers… from France.

[quote]VALRHONA Carre de GUANAJA70% Finest Cocoa/ Made with exquisite

Good post TM.

By the way, the Venezuela Bitter is Japanese.

[quote=“Mucha (Muzha) Man”]Good post TM.

By the way, the Venezuela Bitter is Japanese.[/quote]

Yeah, I thought Morinaga was Japanese… but its made with Venezuelan beans.

Another Japanese brand that is well regarded is Mary’s, which I mentioned above. I think someone else posted that Mary’s is available at Sogo. I got some at Narita Airport at the suggestion of the girl at the Chocolate Bar in Grenwich Village… it was very good.

Did you like the Morinaga Venezuelan Bitter??

[quote=“Mucha (Muzha) Man”]Good post TM.

By the way, the Venezuela Bitter is Japanese.[/quote]

Whenever I had Japanese chocolate it’s been good, nothing like the locally produced wax.

I loved it. Thank you so much for telling me about it. My wife also thanks you. She loves bitter chocolate.

Keep a lookout for this and post if you see it anywhere! :smiley: :

mujweb.cz/www/chocolate/Italie/Elah/itenoim.JPG

This was the best chocolate I’ve ever put in my mouth. But you have to eat it very very slowly (over a couple days), and truly savour it. The one I had was quite a small bar, too.

And someone should import Nestle Orion ČESKO :

mujweb.cz/www/chocolate/Csr/Nestle/czokof.jpg
mujweb.cz/www/chocolate/Csr/Tycinky/orlek5.jpg

If I opened a wee chocolateria in Taipei, would ya’ll like that?

Alien,

I can’t see the pics you posted… don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for…

My wife wants to open a chocolate shop in Taipei… I wonder if such would do well… I mean, one with really fancy chocolates… noy just godiva stuff…???

Edited… OK, I see it now.

You can’t deep link to those sites, you’ll have to copy and paste these into your blowser:

http://mujweb.cz/www/chocolate/Italie/Elah/itenoi.jpg http://mujweb.cz/www/chocolate/Csr/Nestle/czokof.jpg http://mujweb.cz/www/chocolate/Csr/Tycinky/orlek5.jpg

Alien,

I think you would enjoy this:

Per my post above… its available at the German bakery at Breeze.

NO! Your wife has too many businesses already. I want to open a Chocolateria! I have a vision! And some connection with European exporters, too…

I’ll call it Chocolate World and offer chocolate from around the world, but also sell fudge made in-store, so the odour wafts out onto the street and draws in customers. There will be free samples, and people can choose lovely gift boxes, instead of those tacky plastic ferrar rocher thingamabobs. Taiwan has TWO Valentine’s Days a year, mind you. :smiley:

Don’t worry… she has an idea like this every other minute… but she almost never acts on the same.

Why don’t you call it “The Chocolate Factory” ? (apart from the fact you don’t make the chocolate)