We dumped our traditional “flowers & movie” combo for an all-out, chocolate-centric chowhound tour of the city for this Valentine’s Weekend.
We saw this on Foodnetwork’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate: Wake Up Call,” and all I can remember was a really-really-ridiculously-good-looking hot chocolate. That was Jacques Torres’ Wicked Hot Chocolate: rich, chocolatey, unctuous, and warmingly spicy. Their cookies are also not to be messed with and only $2.50 each! Rob also splurged on a huge box of assorted chocolates: truffles, dark chocolate nut bark, pistachio chocolate bars, chocolate Cheerios and pretzels, and hot chocolate. With any luck this will last us until next week…hah.
(Ok so not chocolate-centric, but we had to assuage our chocolate-rush with something salty.) Enter Zabar’s: a bakery slash cheese shop slash deli counter that always packed with old Jewish people. We went straight for the barrels of olives on the left, got some Spanish (martini) olives stuffed with pimento and assorted Greek olives, some Camembert and a crusty baguette, and feasted. Next time, I think we’ll try the Australian Cheddar…
This place is two blocks from Zabar’s and takes restaurant.com coupons, but even with the coupon this place is expensive. $4.50 per piece of Spicy Salmon or Tuna, $5.50 per Eel, and rolls (8 pieces) range from $19-25. Everything was tasty and pretty but I still prefer my mondo Salmon Skin hand rolls from Yuka.
Back to the chocolate! After we had our sushi, we stopped into this place after reading rave reviews on Yelp about their Double Chocolate Chip cookie. So we got two of them, $4 each. They’re huge, have a wonderful crunchy exterior yet soft brownie inside chock full of rich chocolate chunks. Tall glass of milk is necessary. Can’t wait to come back here to try the Double Chocolate Chip Walnut!
The next day…
We’ve known about Gimme! since our days at Cornell, when they were in a humble silver trailer on the Ag Quad, and everyone who works here lives and breathes coffee. They’ve printed a freakin Barista Manual for training their Baristas! Try everything here once but I’m a fan of the Mocha (pictured above) Ya know it’s a good Mocha if you don’t need no stinkin’ sugar 
For our grand finale, we headed to Tom Colicchio’s new restaurant Colicchio & Sons, previously Craftsteak. Ate at the Tap Room which has slightly cheaper entrees than the Dining Room and reservations aren’t necessary. We had the Ricotta with Root Vegetables and Truffle honey dish – creamy ricotta with delicately glazed root veggies like these little white gems called tokyo turnips that explode in your mouth. Rob’s Skirt Steak with Chimichurri was a perfectly cooked hunk of beefy goodness. My Baked Rigatoni with Duck was hot n’ tasty but the duck was slightly mushy. The Banana-Pecan Upside-down Cake had salty-sweet rum caramel, warm cake, and cold Banana sorbet and Malted Milk ice cream. The Coconut cream doughnuts were completely sugar-dusted (not a bad thing) and the limequat marmalade was nice and tart.
Newsflash! You’re looking at February’s hottest new Foodbuzz 24,24,24 Participant 
What happens is every month Foodbuzz Featured Publisher bloggers have a chance to win $250 to create a unique blog-worthy meal. They only select 24 of these proposals a month, so we are really grateful that we were chosen. So come back on February 28 to witness our proposal: Chinese New Year Feast. You don’t wanna miss it!
Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure good cheese falls under the same “decadent cuisine” theme as chocolate
Sounds like a delicious weekend
thanks andrew! props to david for telling us about Zabar’s
Love that mocha with a leave pattern. My kind of barista. How about posting Dad’s famous honey lemon tea? Good for cold and fever and general discomfort. I have found H-Mart (new Korean grocery store near Lake Forest Mall) that sells these golf ball size lime. Each is just perfect for one cup and lime is not as sour as lemon.
Definitely! I loved having those teas when we were sick – what was the recipe again?