Hotel Chocolat
UK-based Hotel Chocolat has opened its first US shop right here in Boston. If you’re thinking “Hang on, the English aren’t exactly known for fine chocolate”, you’re right. Hotel tries too hard and their product’s quality is mixed, but they have some solid ideas.
Visiting their garish website made me expect a shop dripping in overblown décor (a la Vosges). I was surprised to find a clean, spare design with plenty of whitespace. The environment has more in common with Richart, though it is far more approachable. While there is some variety in the offerings, before long it became clear that everything was in a box, and had been shipped overseas. Transatlantic shipping basically rules out fresh ganaches, and indeed the emphasis here is on solid molded chocolate. There are molded chocolate shapes galore, with a number of seasonal offerings. A large swath of wall space is allotted to singe-origin chocolate bars, though there are only four or five regions represented.
I was repeatedly approached by the staff, asking if I needed any help or suggesting their “favorite”. This is to be expected in a Newbury St boutique, but it’s still annoying. If I’m standing there with a dazed look, trying to make sense of your display, that’s one thing: offer a recommendation. But when the customer is reading the labels and picking out a Venezuelan and a Caribbean bar, don’t tell him to get the Ecuadorian one. He knows it’s there.
Hotel Chocolat’s bonbons are mediocre, but you’d pretty much expect that. The boxes are nice and display the product well. They appear to be mostly stock packaging, so they score points for creative use of inexpensive stuff. Mine had four pieces in it, which turned out to be more than enough.
The hazelnut was a sweet milk chocolate with a strong hazelnut flavor, bordering on overpowering. There was feuilletine mixed in for a delicate crunch, but it could have been mistaken for sugar–it wasn’t light and flaky. The enrobage, as with all the pieces, was heavy-handed with occasional air bubbles.
The “Amarena” was a gussied-up cherry cordial. The cordial was made in a molded shell which was then enrobed. Whenever I see a molded piece that’s been enrobed (and you always see it, as the enrobage flakes off when you bite in) I think “aw, look at that. They’re trying so hard.” Really, don’t make us gnaw through a half inch of cheap milk chocolate just because you can’t admit it’s a molded shell.
For the “Brownie“, I’m going to give them a pass on the (unjustified) assumption that the English don’t have brownies. I expected something with a strong cocoa flavor and a chewy center. Anything remotely along these lines would have fit the bill where a brownie is concerned. Instead this piece was a stiff nougat-like ganache enrobed in the standard blanket of milk chocolate. The dark crunchy bits on top may have been remnants of what was once a brownie. Seriously, wtf.
The “Butterscotch” was an unfortunate union of the Brownie and the Amarena. Two levels of ganache combined the boozy “buttercream” of the cordial with the stiff “ganache” of the brownie. The piece had a plastic taste which was fortunately drowned out by the booze. It sported a little biscuit on top, which is okay if you go in for biscuits that aren’t capable of going stale.
While you can give the bonbons a pass, fortunately the bars are surprisingly good, and I’ll be reviewing a few of them next. The whole line is a little overpriced, but again, no more than what you’d expect on Newbury street. There are worse markups right here in Boston, so if you’re craving a decent chocolate bar you could do worse than Hotel Chocolat.