A taste of Hot Chocolate

Satisfying your sweet tooth at the trendy Bucktown dessert bar

By Samantha Levine

Hot Chocolate’s Website describes the new Bucktown venue as “an urban café and dessert experience,” adding another notch to the national trend of raising the dessert bar with, well, dessert bars.

“By far the biggest trend in pastry arts, and one that is projected to have a lasting impact on the American dining scene, is the development of the stand-alone dessert bar,” writes Amy Tarr on StarChefs.com.

So, eager to explore this trend myself, my friend Lindsey and I set out on a Purple, Red and Blue line adventure from Evanston to Bucktown.

Hot Chocolate is easy to miss on a quiet street lined with bright, fashionable boutiques. However, walk inside and you’ll find out immediately it’s well worth the trip and just as cozy as its name suggests; small tables for two dot the small, dimly lit space, each illuminated by candle-light. Thin vases of dried flowers line the wall with mirrors in between. Large parties can reserve plush circular booths curtained off for that V.I.P. feel. And yes, while this is certainly a couples-friendly, romantic evening kind of place, Lindsey and I fit right in among the mix of young and old, friends and more than friends, even on the Saturday night before Valentine’s Day.

While this is certainly a friendly, come-one-come-all, laid-back atmosphere, Hot Chocolate is strictly business when it comes to the food, and that’s meant in the best way possible.

The kitchen is entirely open, for those of you who like to know what goes on with your food before you eat it. And, of course, they serve white milk, and dark hot chocolate. The most mysterious touch though, is the percentages listed alongside those legendary chocolate desserts: 34%, 72%, you get the idea. Lindsey and I speculate what this could possibly mean. Percentage of people who vote this their favorite dessert? Percentage of people who can finish this dessert all by themselves? Our friendly waitress enlightens us.

“It’s the percentage of chocolate in the dessert,” she says with a smile. “The higher the percentage, the more intense the chocolate taste.”

Armed with this information, we order Chocolate II, an ambitious and intense 72% chocolate dessert described as a “carpaccio of fudge brownie, tiramisu cream, mocha ice cream, chocolate sorbet, toffee shavings” and the Apple dessert, just to balance things out — “old fashioned pink lady apple pie, maple ice cream, maple glazed pecans and organic cider syrup.”

We dive in first to the Apple dessert, which is rich, comfort food at its best, apples oozing out of the fluffy pastry, complemented by crunchy pecans.

Chocolate II tastes just as intense as the 72% chocolate content suggests: moist, dark chocolate brownie smothered with the tiramisu and ice cream. Lindsey and I had big plans to finish our meal off with a cup of hot chocolate, but after the most serious chocolate experience of our young adult lives, neither of us was up for it.

Hot Chocolate does it all: savory cuisine, out-of-this-world desserts brought to you by famed pastry chef Mindy Segal (of the nationally renowned mk and mkNorth restaurants), a delectable Sunday brunch and even a carry-out menu. But it’s the sweet treats that are giving Hot Chocolate serious Chicago acclaim, bringing a whole new meaning to idea of saving room for dessert.

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