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Oh, Heavenly Sweets! A Tempting Chocolate Tour of San Francisco By George Medovoy, Editor "You don't have to die to go to chocolate heaven." That's Adam Smith speaking from behind the counter at Fog City News, the largest magazine store in the Bay Area, where the shelves are stocked not only with 22 different versions of Vogue Magazine, but over 200 of the best chocolate bars in the world. But I would modify Smith's comment because Fog City News is only a slice of chocolate heaven in San Francisco.
(Ghiradelli chocolates have been a part of the Bay Area for many years) To experience the whole thing, you have to join one of Andrea Nadel's "Gourmet Walks" chocolate tours of the city. Lucky me, this is exactly what I did with my 8-year-old grandson, David, a devotee of anything sweet - and only now am I coming back down to earth to tell my sweet story. First, some background about Nadel, who had the smarts to fill a need for a chocolate tour. While the young entrepreneur doesn't have a professional culinary background, she does bring a healthy taste for chocolate to the task, nourished during her studies in France. "I've definitely always been interested in chocolate and just always loved it," said Nadel. "So probably I was most exposed to it when I studied abroad ...and got to travel around to all the different countries that are so known for their chocolate, like Switzerland and Belgium." Add to that her experience in marketing and a stint teaching French Provencal cooking, and you have the makings of her audacious young company. "When you look at San Francisco," Nadel said, "even though it's a pretty small city, we have an amazing number of chocolate-makers, whether it's bean-to-bar chocolate-makers like Ghirardelli and Scharffen Berger, or people who make truffles. There's a huge number for a pretty small city." San Francisco has always been "a big food city," she added, considering its specialty cheese stores and bread makers, for example. The city's love affair with chocolate actually began with the Gold Rush, when Italian immigrant Domingo Ghirardelli started a confectionary on the corner of Kearny and Washington Streets in 1851. Of course, San Francisco chocolate has come a long way since Ghirardelli. And we discovered all the tasty details, from bars to truffles, with Anita Chordia, one of Nadel's knowledgeable guides, who met our group of six chocolate lovers in the Justin Herman Plaza for a two-and-a-half-hour walk to some of San Francisco's best chocolate stores. As we crossed the street to the busy Ferry Building marketplace to start our tastings, Chordia told us that Ghana and the Ivory Coast produce 80 percent of cacao beans, the basis of chocolate. At Scharffen Berger, we sampled the Cacao Bittersweet, the company's signature chocolate, which had a pleasant, long finish on the palette.
(At the Scharffen Berger shop in the Ferry Building) Then we tasted the Semi-Sweet Cacao Nibby Bar, which Scharffen Berger calls a candy bar for grown-ups. This was a real treat because the tiny nibs -- the part of the cacao bean used after harvesting -- gave the bar a nutty crunch. Scharffen Berger is known for working directly with plantation farmers in its bean-to-bar approach. "They know where their beans are coming from," Chordia said. "They've done the research…they don't just receive a block of chocolate." The company was the brainchild of the late Dr. Robert Steinberg, a Harvard University graduate, family physician and accomplished cook, and John Scharffenberger, his friend and former patient, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 1973 with a combined degree in botany, cultural anthropology, food history and geography. Steinberg had become interested in making chocolates after visiting France. In 1996, he and Scharffenberger produced their first batch of chocolates with a coffee grinder, mortar and pestle, electric mixer, and hair dryer in Steinberg's home kitchen - a far cry from the company's 27,000-square-foot Berkeley factory today! From Scharffen Berger, we moved over to Recchiuti Confections, a company started by former pastry chef Michael Recchiuti and his wife, Jacky. Our first sampling was Recchiuti's signature piece, the Burnt Caramel. This delightful creation is a dark, smoky caramel blended with extra-bitter chocolate ganache (a chocolate-and-heavy-cream filling), covered with bittersweet chocolate. As if the Burnt Caramel wasn't heaven enough, our lucky group then tasted a Fleur de Sel (Flower of Salt) Caramel. For me, having caramel in any combination is the "ultimate," but Recchiuti's recipe is especially wonderful, covering a chewy, buttery caramel flavored with sea salt to open up the caramel's smoky tones. The mixture was covered in bittersweet chocolate and marbleized with Venezuelan white chocolate. Then came the Cassis Strata, made by resting a silky layer of Madagascar varietal ganache over a block of fruity cassis gelee covered in bittersweet chocolate. The result is like tasting soft fruit jelly flavored with a helping of chocolate. To cap it all off, we were offered a cup of Recchiuti's hot chocolate, which I would call "liquid chocolate" because it consists of pieces of ground chocolate -- and nothing else. One of the members of our group said it brought back memories of Vienna for her, while my grandson David showed his appreciation with a dark ring around his mouth. While still in the Ferry Building, Chordia brought out sample truffles from Joseph Schmidt, a European-trained chocolatier, whose store has been located in the Mission District.
(San Francisco's Ferry Building, home of the popular marketplace) Schmidt, known as the Rodin of chocolate, is famous for making large truffles, like a 25-pound chocolate cable car he presented to the queen of England. His Mexican Chocolate Mini-Truffle included cayenne pepper, chili powder, and cinnamon in a soft ganache filling. The spicy flavoring carried a bit of a bite, and the cinnamon felt good on your throat. As we left the Ferry Building, we made our way to Market Street and Fog City News. Here you can choose from over 700 periodicals from more than 25 different countries - plus the finest chocolates from around the world, including Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Switzerland. "The great thing about the story of Fog City News," said store manager Adam Smith, "is that none of the members of my staff went to culinary school or food science classes. "We have trained ourselves over the years by tasting all kinds of different chocolates, and everything you see on the shelf has been recorded into our data base."
(Some of the wide variety of chocolate bars at Fog City News) The shop has tasting notes for everything it sells and claims to have tasted over 2,000 chocolate bars - tough work, as they say, but somebody has to do it! One
of the sweetest stories associated with Gourmet Walks, Nadel told me, is the marriage
proposal that took place at Fog City News. At Fog City News, we tasted a Dark Chocolate bar made by Oakland producer Michael Mischer, who does everything by hand. The bar's toasted nibs offered a crispy, textural contrast to the thickness of the chocolate. From the varied world of Fog City News we walked to Leonidas, a Belgian chocolate shop in the Crocker Galleria on Post St. Leonidas is known for its butter cream fillings and truffles with bite-size hazel nut pieces. Everything, said French-accented owner Jean-Sebastien Blot, is distinguished by freshness, with shipments flown in from Belgium every 10 days. I loved Leonidas' Gianduja pure almond and hazelnut pralines, which were rich and buttery with a subtle sweetness and made with 100% cocoa butter, the unsaturated vegetable fat of the cacao bean. By the end of our visit, Blot offered everyone a cup of his hot chocolate, which David and I thought was a lot lighter than Recchiuti's, no doubt because Leonidas thins the mixture with steamed milk. Our
next stop was Zurich-based Teuscher Chocolates of Switzerland, the originator,
we discovered, of champagne truffles.
(Clowns at Teuscher Chocolates of Switzerland...and why not, if one of the owners works in the circus!) Manager Alan Le had us sample a rich Milk Chocolate Butter Crunch, which had an outer shell of toffee and finely-ground hazelnuts and a lovely milk chocolate ganache in the center. But the piece de resistance was Teuscher's house specialty, a Champagne Truffle made with dark chocolate ganache and just a dollop of Dom Perignon -- Oprah Winfrey's favorite, said Le. Chordia next led us across Maiden Lane, the infamous Barbary Coast-era brothel district, to Ghirardelli on Stockton Street for a taste of its velvety dark chocolate squares known as Twilight Delight. Our tour came to an end at Cocoa Bella, a chocolate shop in the Westfield Center on Union Street, where the counter was filled with over 150 artisan chocolates from 21 international chocolate-makers. "All of our chocolate-makers have something about them that makes them special and unique," said store manager David Price. For example, he told us, there were chocolates from Mary's, the official chocolatier to the king and queen of Belgium, and Olivier, France's oldest chocolate maker, whose credentials date back to 1780. David offered us samples from two outstanding North American chocolate-makers - Thomas Haas Fine Pastries and Deserts of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Christopher Elbow Artisanal Chocolates of Kansas City, which also has a boutique shop on Hayes Street in San Francisco. Haas and Elbow are also highly-talented pastry chefs. Haas specializes in hand-crafted chocolates and was named one of the top 20 artisan chocolatiers by Chocolatier Magazine, while Elbow helped celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse open Delmonico Steakhouse at the Las Vegas Venetian. We sampled a Haas Aztec made from dark chocolate ganache with a blend of ancho, arbol, and habanero chiles and a hint of cinnamon, a mixture obviously drawing on the Aztecs' early flavorings. From Christopher Elbow, we tasted a Salted Pecan Caramel made from a thin layer of caramel topped with a single roasted pecan in dark chocolate seasoned with a small amount of Fleur de Sel sea salt.
(Christopher Elbow chocolates are among the wide variety sold at Cocoa Bella in San Francisco) In the days following the tour, I looked for a way to better understand the creative energy required to prepare the bite-size, sweet happiness called chocolate. From my grandson David the answer I got was the big smile on his face. And in the course of reading about Thomas Hass and his raison d'etre for preparing "the most delectable handcrafted chocolates possible," I was drawn to something else as simple as a child's smile. One of his goals, Haas said, is simply "to have fun and make people laugh…" And who could argue with that? WHEN
YOU GO… Tours are scheduled Wednesdays and Fridays at 10:30 a.m. and Saturdays at 2 p.m., but private tours can also be arranged or added when regularly-scheduled tours are sold out. Cost
of the tour is $50.19, including tax. NEW CHOCOLATE AND WINE TOUR
Nadel has also introduced a new "Chocolate and Wine Tour." The
tour visits "The Press Club" on Yerba Buena Lane for a tasting of eight
different wineries from Napa and Sonoma, combined with chocolate. Then the tour
goes on to "Wine," a store on the Embarcadero, for a number of additional
pairings with Gewurztraminer and Ruby Port.
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