We had been avoiding stopping in, mainly because any place that claims to be the best at anything usually isn't, and we'd been reading mixed reviews about the $6.50 a slice dessert. The shop comes to NY all the way from Brazil, where Portugese Chef Carlos Bras Lopes established the chain, duly titled 'O Melhor Bolo de Chocolate de Mundo.'
Now, I've been to Brazil and can say from first-hand experience that they have some damn good chocolate. I don't know what the South American country does so different from the US, but I could have died happy eating half of the desserts I tried in Rio. I figured, if the chocolate in Brazil is so amazing, how bad could this cake that claims to be the best be?!
We stopped into the store in Nolita, located at 55 Spring Street. I'm going to rephrase that. We stopped into the store in Soho. Since I'm not sure what Nolita actually stands for, and I was two blocks from the Apple 'Soho' location, I'm going to assume that's where I was. It was a tiny store that I had unknowingly passed by multiple times in the past few weeks. Inside, there was enough room for 3 small tables, 2 seats each. All tables were being used when we got there, so we had to take our $800 piece of cake and bring it to the bench outside. Already I wasn't thrilled with the set-up. I wonder if the Lisbon or Brazil locations had room for people to actually eat the cake they just sold their first born to pay for.
Despite our hesitations, we were there, so we had to weigh in our opinion. There were 2 choices - the semisweet contained 55% cocoa, and the bittersweet had 70%. The woman behind the counter told us the semisweet version was favored highly, so we opted for that one. She cut a tiny sliver of cake (at least I would have no guilt about eating this since I could barely see it on the plate), sadly emptied my wallet, and brought the cake to the exiled bench in Guam.
The cake contains Belgian chocolate mousse, meringue, and chocolate ganache. It looked thin and - for lack of a better word, wimpy, on the plate, with the top layer of chocolate peeling off. Cjap and guest star of the day Melissa stuck our forks in and tasted it.
To be fair, the chocolate was good. It was soft and smooth, and the mixture of mousse, meringue and ganache blended nicely. Was it a bad cake? No. Was it a good cake? I'll be generous and say fine. Was it the BEST chocolate cake in the world? Not even close. I might have preferred Entermann's to this. My expectations had been high, to no fault of my own - the store itself told me to prepare to be blown away. The best part of my experience was that they gave me a free glass of ice water, which I think I enjoyed more than the cake. 2.3 bites each and we were finished. Not worth $6.50. Not worth the calories. Not worth a trip to Nolita/Soho/whatever new name the neighborhood might take on this week. Even worse was the fact that since we had to sit on the bench in front, all the people passing by that stopped to call out that they spotted 'The Best Chocolate Cake in the World', were irritating since we had no choice but to sit directly in front of the sign, and couldn't enjoy our microscopic overpriced chocolate in peace.
Their website is currently under construction; if you try to find it through search you'll be directed to their Portugese site. So unless you can translate Portugese, you're stuck going to the actual store to see for yourself. Or if you are my Brazilian friend Thiago, kindly send me actual Brazilian chocolate. If you care to waste some money and put it to the test, go for it, but this place is not getting our endorsement.!
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