On Saturday, February 9th the For the Love of Chocolate Foundation hosted a black tie benefit to provide scholarships to pastry students for the French Pastry School for the City Colleges of Chicago. Many of the students in attendance appeared to appreciate the support to this event. Cooking school can be very expensive compared to other types of schools, so the money raised went to a very good cause. Needless to say, chocolate was everywhere.
One of the first things we grabbed was a delicious cocktail made with wild elderflower liqueur from France called St. Germain, mixed with champagne, sparkling water, and lemon. This was a superb drink, and I could write a separate article on this, but for now let's discuss the event.
Before starting on the chocolate, we went straight to the Cocoa Couture section of the event, which focused on savory dishes from some of the top restaurants in Chicago. My favorite was from NoMi, with bourgogne duck confit risotto with pearl onions and baby carrots. Art Smith's Table Fifty-Two provided a tasty arugula salad with goat cheese, pecans, and apples. Calahan Catering served seared Japanese sushi-grade scallops with parsnip puree with braised oxtail ragu and pickled carrots, which was good. Everest/Brasserie Jo's saucisson on brioche with French lentil salad and dijon aioli was nice, and Bistro 110's braised beef shortribs with creme fraiche mashed potatoes were just okay at best, but perhaps appealed to people with more Middle American tastes.
In addition to the restaurant personnel, there were a few artesian product distributors on hand. Restauranters and cheese shop owners don't fly over to Europe and pack cheese wheels and charcuterie bought at town markets in their suitcases. The USDA food-sniffing dogs. would be howling mad; so the distributors meet the need for food that the U.S. government approves. One of the more interesting displays were the cheese and liqueur combinations provided by a distributor, Great American Cheese Collection, which served delicious combinations of burrata (made from mozzarella and cream) and Chambord, as well as a Grand Marnier/cheese pairing. Once we had a belly full it was on to the chocolate.
On our way in between chocolate rooms, we stopped and took a glimpse at the Cocoa Couture fashion show, which consisted models with wearable chocolate combined with the latest fashions. The room was crowded, and we were more interested to try the chocolates so we took a peek and it was off to the next room.
Vosges Haut-Chocolat, one of the most creative outfits giving many people access to combinations such as chocolate and bacon, unfortunately fell short with their single-source chocolate display. Don't get me wrong here: I love Vosges, but I was not able to get the benefits of single-source chocolate when only one of the three examples displayed was dark chocolate (the other two were white chocolate and milk chocolate). I like milk chocolate and white chocolate, too, but I interpreted the point of the exercise as highlighting the terroir of chocolate, and I guess I didn't get it. To me that would be like serving French champagne and California Cabernet Sauvignon to the untrained observer and pointing out the different in terroir,
The other big artesian chocolate maker, Coco Rouge, had an amazing deconstructed champagne truffle, with chenin blanc and chardonnay, served with artisan butter, lightly carbonated ganache, and carbonated sugar. The deconstruction came from the carbonation being on the outside.
We walked through the Cocoa Sutra, which had belly dancers, chocolate massages,chocolate body art, and a sitar band in the background. Charlie Trotter's provided complexity with an oaxacan chocolate with grilled cactus in cinnamon syrup, along with lime foam and a frozen chocolate custard with lime zest. Wow! Tru was also represented, and had a chocolate carmel malt lollipop.
The Cocoa Lounge was as one would expect, loungy., and it featured a flautist and guitar player to add ambiance, and there were some cocoa and liqueur pairings, such as a French Banyuls sweet wine combined with a dark chocolate, which was quite good. By that time it was getting a bit late in the evening, and we could not eat any more, much as we wanted to.
It was a pleasure to be able to attend this event: it was well-organized, the students seemed genuinely enthusiastic, the volunteers were very helpful, and most importantly, money went to a good cause.
Has anyone tried Coco Rouge's new ice creams? They are amazing, smoked banana creme fraiche, saffron honey, coconut sea salt sorbet, and their bittersweet chocolate ice cream smacks you in the face the finish is incredible.
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