Hotel Chocolat review

by Roz

(Warning: contains pictures of scrumptious chocolates and a link to the Hotel Chocolat website which currently has chocolate on sale with up to 50% off.... don't shout at me if you end up buying lots of chocolate!  But order me a Mississippi Mud Pie slab.  Please.  Thanks!)

I recently went along to a fabulous Yelp event after spotting a tweet from the lovely Briony asking Yelpers to RSVP if they wanted to head along to an invite only evening at Hotel Chocolat.  With the promise of Prosecco and chocolates a plenty, I got my name down super quick and was lucky enough to get a place.

Hotel Chocolat has a store in Edinburgh but this new store in the St Enoch centre is Glasgow's first. They grow their own cocoa on their Rabot Estate in St Lucia and in addition are also partners with over 150 cocoa farmers in St Lucia to ensure they can purchase enough cocoa to keep up with demand.  It was really good to hear the history of the company and some of the ethics from Nicola (above), whilst we were taken on a tasting tour of the chocolate range.

We got to try Hotel Chocolat's 'showpiece' chocolate bar, the world's first single cote chocolate.  This is a 70% dark bar of chocolate made with cocoa harvested from a small area of the Rabot Estate named the Marcial Cote.  This method of producing a specific flavour of chocolate from one small area of the estate reminded me of what vineyards do to produce unique wines.  It's certainly an interesting concept and something a bit different for true chocolate connoisseurs.

After tasting some of the rich rabot and dark chocolates, we moved on to sampling some of the luxury truffle collection.  The pralines below were simply divine!  These are the milk chocolate ones but I noticed they were also available in white and dark chocolate too.

I am not usually a fan of alcoholic chocolates and was going to give the pink champagne truffles below a miss, but I am so glad I tried them.  They were fantastic, the alcohol was not overpowering, nor did liquid leak out of the truffle when you bit through it.  The truffle was light and fluffy and delicious.

So many of the chocolates we got to taste came in the little six packs that you see above, which thanks to the floor to ceiling display in the store, looks like the best chocolate pick and mix ever!!

 

They literally have hundreds of luxury chocolate flavour combinations in these little six packs that are great as a treat or a posh gift for a friend.  Somehow I managed to leave the shop with only four packs of chocolate and two of them were gifts (one for Bex [ed: they were delish - thank you!] and one for B!).  I can highly recommend the Chilli Pralines (the mini Union Jack choccies in the picture above) and the Billionaire's Shortbreads :) 

The store also have a Cocoa Cuisine range, which includes some classic savoury delights with a cocoa or chocolate twist!  We got to try the the cocoa pesto (lush) and the white chocolate horseradish (actually amazing!) but they also have jars of plain old chocolate spread for the less adventurous.

  

   

These chocolate slabs are £15 each, so certainly not your every day treat but they come in fabulously mouthwatering flavours from rocky road and mississippi mud pie to the amazing lemon meringue pie!   

I spied this bad boy just as I was leaving the shop, a mini chocolate slab, and really wished I'd bought one, white chocolate, milk chocolate and banana, mmmmmmm!  I think the next time I'm in the St Enoch Centre I know where I'm heading :)

The event was really good fun, so thanks to Yelp and Hotel Chocolat, I recommend a dinner of chocolate and prosecco to you all!

Roz xx

P.S.  Tune in next Tuesday for the next installment of our Forever House!