The art of chocolate. Interesting, combining something you hang on your wall with something you put in your mouth. Although, I suppose if you frequent the New Museum, half of what you'll find there could very well be edible, or resemble something you've recently chewed up. But, La Maison du Chocolat, a fancy little French chocolatier, believes that making chocolate pretty makes it taste better. Does it? Let's evaluate.
Guest chocolatier of the day Becca forwarded me an invite last week to a special event at La Maison du Chocolat called 'La Nuit de Gateau', the night of cake, or pastries, or something along those lines says the French translation tool on Google.
This celebration was being held for the 20th anniversary of the shop's existence in NY. We decided to check it out, since I'm fairly certain French chocolate is not cheap, and if I ever did pick this place to use for the blog, I could probably afford one tiny piece and not get to try lots of fun things for free! We went to the flagship location on Madison and 79th street, and waited on a line down the block for our chocolate. 20 minutes and one complimentary dixie cup of hot chocolate later, we were in!
All of the employees had cute little French accents, and all wanted us to fill our hands with assorted chocolates and pastries. We bypassed the chocolate and lemon cakes (damn gluten allergy!) and went for the chocolate tarts (I'm going to use the English names for the products, so I don't sound like Pepe Le Pew over here). These were bite sized pieces of rich chocolate in a hard graham-type shell, with a speckle of gold on top for decoration. We loved these, and discovered they were also sold in cake form. Recommended if you want to drop $$ on a fancy little gift for Thanksgiving dessert.
Interestingly flavored ganaches were the specialty at the opening of the original shop in Paris. We sampled one called the Salvador, a combination of chocolate and raspberry and La Maison's most popular. I'm not a raspberry fan, but I can see someone who is liking this. For the event, there were little chocolate pieces with the 'La Nuit de Gatea' printed on them.
Lastly, there were the macarons. There were I believe 10 different flavors, from your Quito chocolate (filled with ganache) and Guayaquil vanilla (filled with dark chocolate), to Rigoletto (chocolate caramel), Romeo (coffee chocolate) and Salvador (raspberry). I haven't hopped on the macaron bandwagon, but these things were pretty good, and perfectly sized (about the size of a half dollar).
There are 3 New York locations of La Maison du Chocolat - their flagship is located at 1018 Madison Ave between E 78th and 79th street. They are also located at 30 Rock, and 63 Wall Street. If you're traveling internationally, you can find them in Paris (obvy), Tokyo, Cannes, London (one location is, of course, in Harrods!), and Hong Kong.
They also have a website where you can order boxed chocolate (they have a Thanksgiving turkey chocolate on the site right now), so you can Frenchen up the holidays this year.
La Maison du Chocolat
They also have a really fun Christmas catalog worth checking out - I'll request the $1200 chocolate candy cane Christmas tree. Two of em. I expect them under the tree waiting for me on Christmas morning.
Really expensive Christmas gifts
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