After the £450 meal...the £25.00 box of chocs

[Kikujiro]

there were alleGedly other Restaurants too ...

[Andy Lynes]

BTW, anyone considering dining at The Square might like to know that petit fours take the form of a choice from a bloody great tray of chocs from Artisan du Chocolat.

Right. Am there tonight. Good oh

Go hungry is all I would say.

The pub next door is quite nice if you can get a table, or the bar at the Connaught is quie handy for a drink before or after. Also, The Square do have a nice pair of very comfortable and squashy sofas by the bar which is also a nice place to sip champagne and watch the beautiful people come and go. And thats just the staff. Ha ha. (I should be on the stage. Really).

[cappers]

www.chocexpress.com

excellent website.. brilliant chcocs

[Steve Martin]

A meal for two at Marc Veyrat came to £460

People get very sneery about Lindt chocolate, but I prefer their Excellence range to Valrhona. Especially with the eclats or shards of cocoa in.

We have a very nice Maxwell and Kennedy chocolate shop in York, but I can't remember what I pay.

[Vanessa]

Marcolini UK website

Dear Magnolia, if you are going to plug your article, you could at least give us a hint as to where to find it!

v

[Andy Lynes]

Vanessa, we are working on it. It's subscription only, but we maybe able to reproduce it here, pending legal advise from a certain Mr Fat Guy.

[Basildog]

(I should be on the stage. Really).

Reminds me of an old Scottish Pastry Lecturer who would cut my wiity replies down to size with "Aye Adrian, ya should be on the stage....sweeping it!"

[macrosan]

Reminds me of an old Scottish Pastry Lecturer who would cut my wiity replies down to size with "Aye Adrian, ya should be on the stage....sweeping it!"

I've never seen anyone lecture a Scottish pastry. How many of them go on to higher education anyway ? Perhaps the Balic knows.

Having observed your thespian styles (well, a few of them at least) Adrian, I would say to you "Do not despair. The pastry lecturer may have been wrong. I detect latent talent there".

[magnolia]

Marcolini UK website

Dear Magnolia, if you are going to plug your article, you could at least give us a hint as to where to find it!

v

It was in the Wall Street Journal December 27, Personal Journal, page 2. Unfortunately it is only available to Factiva subscribers ! I asked my editor if I'm allowed to post it with due credit to he WSJ etc. and she hasn't yet gotten back to me and I certainly don't want to run afoul of their policies (or egullet's)... However I've just attempted to email it to you using the e-gullet email function. Let me know if it doesn't come through and we'll figure something out. I'm flattered ! Enjoy.

[Vanessa]

How kind of you Magnolia, thank you. That e-mail goes to my home, so I won't get it till this evening. However, if you were to pm me, I would send you my e-mail address here. This is also a way of testing the pm-system, as I've a funny feeling it doesn't work properly to me here.

v

[cabrales]

Zagat reports the following:

"L'Artisan du Chocolat: The supplier to many of London's top restaurants will offer tutored chocolate tastings in their shop at 89 Lower Sloane Street, SW1 (January 15 and 29, February 19; £35 per person; 020-7824 8365)."

[Kikujiro]

Renowned Brussels based choclatier Pierre Marcolini has opened up a shop at 6 Lancer Square off Kensington Church Street. A 250g box of his chocolates, made from his very own chocolat de couveture created from cocoa beans he has sourced himself will set you back a mere £24.99.

He claims to be the only chocolatier in the UK operating at such a level, all others using industrialised chocolate bases with a percentage of vegetable fat in them. Has anyone tried these chocs as yet, or is intending to do so. Are they really worth £100 per kilo? Can you really taste the difference?

Heston's TV prog this week incidentally confirmed (I believe) that Artisan use imported couverture.

[magnolia]

Renowned Brussels based choclatier Pierre Marcolini has opened up a shop at 6 Lancer Square off Kensington Church Street. A 250g box of his chocolates, made from his very own chocolat de couveture created from cocoa beans he has sourced himself will set you back a mere £24.99.

He claims to be the only chocolatier in the UK operating at such a level, all others using industrialised chocolate bases with a percentage of vegetable fat in them. Has anyone tried these chocs as yet, or is intending to do so. Are they really worth £100 per kilo? Can you really taste the difference?

Heston's TV prog this week incidentally confirmed (I believe) that Artisan use imported couverture.

Very few chocolatiers can afford to make their own couverture, this involves making a deal with a cocoa grower and it's mostly large outfits like Valrhona that can afford to do this. I forget the 'tonnage' that makes it worthwhile for a grower to deal directly with a chocolatier, but Marcolini has critical mass I guess, maybe one or two other European chocolatiers as well. Aside from them it's just large companies that have the wherewithal to buy their cocoa straight from the producers, then make up couverture and sell it to chefs, chocolatiers, etc. Otherwise it's the equivalent of you or me opening a single coffee shop and going straight to a coffee plantation in South America or wherever and saying "Hi, I want you to grow such-and-such beans this way, just for me...but I can only afford to buy a few sacks a year" - vs. Acme Huge Conglomerates which buys vast quantities, and so can dictate what is grown and how...it's just more efficient for growers to deal with big companies with reliable quantity / quality demands.

[Bloated]

so what is the individual chocolatier's input in the making of a chocolate bar? do they just decide the thickness of the bar and the shape of the chunks? how does their taste come into it?

[Rossco]

I have been working through a box of these over the last three days with my girlfirend, and they are really quite something. Its difficult to remain truely objective given the price (I am striving to find every last plus-point I can!), but in my opinion they are the finest chocolates I've yet eaten. In terms of mouthfeel and taste they have the edge on Amedei, Valrhona, Mary's, Wittamer. But the real treat lies in the construction and fillings. Marcolini has managed to build some kind of delayed reaction into the pralines, for instance the pistachio gianduja begins with a crisp dark chocolate shell, and a simple, single-note of bitter choclate flavour. After 2-3secs it lightens, and then a remarkably clear pistachio flavour emerges, before the chocolate notes reassert themselves and you're left with all the flavours blending on the tongue. I thought this must be a one-off but the same experience was built into the various tea-flavoured efforts, the champagne truffle. Undisputed pick of the box though was the 'Ballon de Golf Blanc', as the name suggests this is constructed as a half golf-ball. The shell is white chocolate, and within lies a shelled walnut, a puff pastry base and a veritable sea of creme caramel (I should add that the creme is very, very runny). Our policy of sharing half of each chocolate was swiftly set aside by myself following the first taste of this one.

The shop itself is impressive, but more so was the experience and interest of the staff - trying hard to spread their message and more than happy to provide samples etc. The packaging is fairly smooth too, more in common with some of Cuba's finest no 5's than your average chocs. All in all, I'd recommend 250g's to all and sundry. The nights are still cold and dark and heres a good reason for staying in and making some coffee.

[Jon Tseng]

Very few chocolatiers can afford to make their own couverture, this involves making a deal with a cocoa grower and it's mostly large outfits like Valrhona that can afford to do this. I forget the 'tonnage' that makes it worthwhile for a grower to deal directly with a chocolatier,  but Marcolini has critical mass I guess, maybe one or two other European chocolatiers as well.

I know Bernachon in Lyon do chocolate right from the bean

Other than that Marcolini is the first one I know of - yes most of them do seem to get the couverture from Valhrona et al

J

[Gavin Baxter]

Its difficult to remain truely objective given the price (I am striving to find every last plus-point I can!), but in my opinion they are the finest chocolates I've yet eaten.

I know what you mean! The damn things are fabulous. But I do find myself calculating the cost of each choc as I lift it from the box......

Gavin

[Bloated]

they are 60p each when you buy them in a bag...

[Basildog]

I have recently been given a box of Pierre Marcolini Chocs, and i think there fantastic.I'm not in a position to compare to others mentioned in this thread,. but IMHO they are bloody lovely

[Vanessa]

I am not a great chocolate eater and had not paid too much attention to this thread. My conversion to the gospel of Marcolini came recently, in quite a different way. I was invited to a dinner related to the promotion of a book on chocolate by a London 'competitor'. The evening was very interesting and enjoyable, but the food, at Mju, did not live up to the billing in my view and seemed untypical of the style of the chef. Afterwards it transpired that the recipes were all from the chocolate lady, not the chef's. It showed. One of the dinner guests was the co-owner of the Marcolini shop, Deborah. She impressed me throughout the evening with her restraint in the face of what, to me, was an evening of not very good quality chocolate. She said not a word, but every now and then I caught a glimpse of well-mannered pain in her eyes.

So, the next day, I just had to go to Marcolini's. And I am unlikely ever to buy chocolates elsewhere unless the level of quality decreases or the shop (God forbid) goes out of business.

OK, they cost a bomb in relative terms, so this is how I rationalise it: a Marcolini chocolate is not inferior, in sensory terms, to a glass of wine. Look how much we pay for a glass of wine in this country compared to 60p for a Marcolini chocolate.

I prefer them to Artisan du Chocolat, which I find a little austere and lacking in variety. AdC chocolates are probably more suited for after a long, high quality dinner. But for sheer sensory hedonism and perfectionism Marcolini is the winner. He understands the importance of texture as much as taste.

Service in the shop is exceptional and they are very generous with samples and extra bits of this and that to ease the pain.

Finally, it was the only thing I could think of that I could be certain that Basildog couldn't get in Padstow, and that was a worthy monument to 7 years of Margot's.

v