So. There’s a hot chocolate festival happening in Vancouver right now. This would be fine, but I have a bit of a problem and I have been trying to hit as many of the places as I can. Some of them have been fantastic and some have been nearly impossible to get to, so I haven’t tried them yet. And, since no one asked for it, here’s my thoughts of the ones I’ve been to.
49th Parallel – Dark Chocolate Love
I do love a dark chocolate, and this one is delightfully dark. 49th Parallel was my favourite of last year’s very few hot chocolate festival drinks I’d tried, so I was looking forward to this years offering.1 It is made with cocoa powder, though, so there is a little bit of that grainy-ness to it that comes with not having someone carefully stir it as the milk is being heated up, but it’s not that bad.
The first time they were out of the doughnut, but it wasn’t that much of a detriment. They have these doughnuts year round, so they aren’t that incredibly special of a treat to go along with it.
Bel Cafe – Prettier in Pink
I am a sucker for anything floral, so this one with the rose and fruity tastes was right up my alley. It’s quite sweet, which is a given since it’s white chocolate, but there’s still a good amount of flavour there to latch onto. It isn’t very chocolatey, though, which is unfortunate. It might have been nicer as a milk or dark chocolate instead of the white, but then it wouldn’t have the same aesthetic, so…
This one came with a macaron that I was not a huge fan of, mostly because I don’t like the non-cream fillings that they chose. The jammy stuff just doesn’t do it for me. Your milage may vary, though.
Soirette – Mining for Vibranium
Do you like black things? I am suspicious of any food that is black.2 Still, I am more suspicious of pea white chocolate, so I went with the black drink and truffle instead.
The drink is more sweet than anything else. Some of that is likely due to the rim, which is covered in ganache and sprinkles, but also possibly due to the mixing. I found that the drink tasted different the further down I got, with a lot of the sweetness pooling at the bottom and a lot of the chocolate being near the top, which is a strange shift that I wasn’t expecting.
The truffle was fine. It comes with a chocolate truffle, which isn’t really anything special, although it is pretty. Overall, it’s kind of an average experience.
East Van Roasters – The Umami Experience
So first off, don’t go down Hastings to get here. I know better, but my ability to pay attention to where I’m going and not get lost are both awful.
To start, this is a drinking chocolate as opposed to a hot chocolate. An important distinction to anyone who has had drinking chocolate before. It’s warm, significantly heavier and thicker, and impossible to drink quickly. This one was a little salty and strangely meaty in a way I can’t quite describe, but still really nice. It felt homey eating it, even though it was wrecking my insides the whole time.3 It’s one I think I would have enjoyed more with a friend, since it is intended as a much slower experience than the rest of them.
This is paired with chocolate wasabi almonds, which mercifully aren’t too spicy. There’s a nice flavour to them and they go really well with the drinking chocolate. It even comes with cute chopsticks that you definitely aren’t going to use at all. They are only for the aesthetic. And I’m okay with that.
Cadeaux Bakery – Cocoanut
I don’t normally choose the vegan option voluntarily, but at this point I was in pain from the amount of dairy I’d consumed. And this one had a few strikes against it already because I do not like coconut and avoid it normally.
However. However. It was actually pretty nice. The dark chocolate is a nice counter to how sweet the coconut milk was, and it didn’t have a coconut-y aftertaste until I was a good way through the drink. Of all three drinks Id had that day, this one was my favourite. Possibly because it didn’t hurt me like the others had.
They also gave me a vegan cookie which was less nice because it was also coconut and this time I could taste it. Also, it was all in togo stuff instead of the cute for here dishes I saw around me.
Mink – Who you calling a conehead?
Aside from the presentation, it’s honestly nothing special. It’s a standard hot chocolate served in an ice cream cone that has a very thick layer of chocolate inside of it so that it doesn’t melt through it to the wafer. It was nice, but it’s less than a full cup of hot chocolate and not really worth the price.
Dishonorable Mention: Perverted – Young, Dumb, and full of Kumquat
I have had so much trouble with Perverted to the point where it wasn’t open when we went to get it. A coworker ended up getting one of these and, well, she wasn’t impressed. I’ll skip the tale of their service, which is always a bit of a crapshoot, and right to the drink. It was white, weirdly thick and lumpy in appearance, and apparently tasted of steamed milk that had read about white chocolate on Wikipedia once. The merge that came with it tasted like sugar and nothing more. So… skip.
Anyone try the other ones? How is it?