New York is a chocolate-lovers dream if you know where to look. From a hipster chocolate factory in Brooklyn, to a chic Upper East Side chocolate boutique, the city is dotted with stylish and interesting places to get your cocoa-fix - and even watch chocolates being made...
Jacques Torres
Jacques Torres is New Yorks answer to Willy Wonka. The French pastry chef owns a clutch of working chocolate factories in the city, where you can sit at the wood-panelled bar on a chilly day and sip a thick, luscious hot chocolate. The flagship branch in West Soho features glass displays where behind the boxes of truffles and bonbons, you can see the vintage chocolate-making machines in action. All thats missing is the Oompa Loompas. Dont leave without trying a cookie theyre filled with giant, gooey chocolate chips.
Jacques Torres, 350 Hudson Street, NY 10014
Enq (001) 212 414 2462, mrchocolate.com
Vosges Haut-Chocolat
Stylish New Yorkers dont get their chocolate fix by wolfing down a Mars Bar. Instead, they head to Vosges, a chic boutique with branches on the Upper East Side and Soho. The Upper East Side branch, one block from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is all white chandeliers and marble counters, while the Soho branch looks like an eccentric apothecary wooden cabinets filled with peacocks, Buddha statues and jars of spices. Truffles come packaged in purple and gold, while Vosges signature range is chocolate with bacon. Its not as weird as it sounds the fat and salt of the bacon is a distinctive but subtle partner to the sweet chocolate.
Vosges Haut Chocolat, 1100 Madison Avenue, NY 10028
Enq (001) 212 717 2929, vosgeschocolate.com
Also at 132 Spring Street, NY 10012
Mast Brothers
The Mast Brothers are Rick and Michael, two cool, young brothers (think matching bushy red beards and forearm tattoos), who founded a working chocolate factory in Williamsburg. The factory now has a shop where the wooden shelves are lined with globes, an antique toy sailing boat, and Mast Brothers distinctive, artfully-wrapped chocolate bars. Mast Brothers makes single-origin dark chocolate bars (youll smell the rich aromas as you walk in the store) with bold flavours like Stumptown Coffee, vanilla and smoke or Maine sea salt, each hand-wrapped with different graphic-print papers.
Mast Brothers, 111 N 3
Enq (001) 718 388 2625, mastbrothers.com
Chocolate Bar
Chocolate Bar is a small and snug chocolate shop and cafe in the West Village. It eschews the grandeur of some New York chocolate shops for mid-century Modern decor in a cheery palette of orange, grey, brown and turquoise. Grab a coffee and a rich, fudgy brownie and try to nab a spot at the small communal table, where locals linger over a coffee while working on their MacBook Airs. If theres nowhere to perch, pick up one of Chocolate Bars signature peanut butter and jelly bars to take away the chocolate shell encases raspberry jam, a crisp wafer and creamy peanut butter. Delicious.
Chocolate Bar, 19 8
Enq (001) 212 366 1541, chocolatebarnyc.com
Marie Belle
The chocolates at this elegant Soho shop, which is festooned with gold and chandeliers, look like mini works of art. First theres the pin-up bars wrapped in papers decorated with 50s models, then the displays of delicate milk and dark chocolate pearls, and then there are the signature collection chocolates under the glass counter, each filled with ganache and painted with different figures and colourful seasonal designs. The shop itself is a sanctuary from the Manhattan bustle head to the back of the room, where behind a velvet curtain youll find a secluded tea parlour.
Marie Belle, 484 Broome Street, NY 10013
Enq (001) 212 925 6999, mariebelle.com