By Vladia Jurcova

“Chocolate…this seductive, sensual and utterly irresistible food commands a magical place in our culinary palette. Known as the ‘food of the gods,’ its mere mention conjures up images of creamy, velvety happiness,” says Amanda Dew Manning as she leads her guests through the darker and sweeter side of Charleston, SC.

President of Carolina FoodPros, Manning is a food expert and tenth generation South Carolinian. She takes her guests behind the scenes to discover everything you’ve always wanted to know about chocolate from Charleston’s most renowned pastry chefs, bakers and chocolatiers.

I managed to squeeze in on Amanda’s holiday chocolate tours in December, and I was not disappointed. We got to taste some of the world’s best chocolate and comforted our souls with a sampling of delicious chocolate desserts at some of Charleston’s finest restaurants, bakeries and specialty shops.

Lucas Belgium Chocolate, at 73 State Street in downtown, was our first stop. We indulged in a layered tasting, starting with pieces of milk chocolate and ending with dark chocolate. Amanda Ayers, the owner and chocolatier, explained that the Mayans and Aztecs believed chocolate was a gift from the gods. After the heavenly tasting at Lucas Belgium Chocolate, I am a believer. Although milk chocolate is my favorite, there is nothing more pleasing than a bite of semi-sweet chocolate, which contains less sugar and more cocoa and satisfies a chocolate craving much faster. We also learned that each bite of chocolate should be tasted slowly and thoughtfully. This advice can truly make chocolate tasting an event to remember.

After eating our desert first, we headed for an entrée—actually another desert, but bigger—to Charleston Grill in the luxurious Charleston Place Hotel. Mickey Bakst, the restaurant’s General Manager, was waiting in the hotel’s magnificent lobby to show us his kingdom, normally hidden from ordinary guests. Only participants on Amanda’s tour have the privilege of going behind the scenes. After all, we were on a journey to be seduced by chocolate and nothing was off limits to us.

Carleston Place Hotel is the biggest and the most elegant hotel in historic Charleston. In the pastry kitchen, we met Vinzenz Aschbacher, Charleston Grill Executive Pastry Chef and the magician whose masterpieces delight hotel and restaurant guests. His spotless kitchen smelled like cookies and freshly baked bread. This kitchen produces more than 1,500 desserts every day, and that doesn’t include bread and pastries.

Chef Aschbacher surprised us with Valrohna chocolate mousse, orange scented crème anglaise and fresh raspberries served with sweet and Rosa Regale Italian sparkling wine that marries nicely with dark chocolate. He also demonstrated how to make chocolate mousse at home. We learned that chocolate burns at 122 degrees and thus direct heat cannot be used to melt it. Chef Aschbacher prepared his mousse from three kinds of chocolate for comparison. He even used chocolate made from rare Columbian cocoa beans. We left Charleston Grill with plenty of new information about chocolate and a gift of Chef Aschbacher’s finest chocolate truffles to nibble as we walked through the charming streets to out last stop.

At the trendy, upscale Cypress Restaurant we met Executive Pastry Chef M. Kelly Wilson, a South Carolina native and graduate of Johnson & Wales Culinary Art School. She prepared Cypress Molten Chocolate Cake. According to Chef Wilson, this is probably the most popular desert on the menu at Charleston restaurants and she warned us that one couldn’t finish it alone. Well, that didn’t happen to anyone on our tour and the undercooked brownies, as she called her molten chocolate cakes, and vanilla ice-cream that garnished the dessert disappeared in no time from my plate.

Chef Wilson told us that she only uses the finest European chocolate. Her favorite for baking is Cacao Barry, the connoisseur’s brand of choice for cocoa products. Cacao Barry is the French division of the Barry Callebaut chocolate makers, which manufactures chocolate and related products of superb quality. For everyday baking needs, Wilson suggested using Ghirardelli, originally an American company that has been making premium chocolate for 150 years, and Lindt chocolate, produced by a company that was established 160 years ago in Switzerland.

Rodolphe Lindt was probably the most famous maker of chocolate in the nineteenth century and his technique, which allowed him to make premium melting chocolate, contributed significantly to the worldwide reputation of Swiss chocolate. After these suggestions, I started to pay attention and I found Lindt chocolate at my grocery store. The company that produces Lindt chocolate in 1998 acquired Ghirardelli Chocolate Company and so Lindt is now widely available on the US market.

Taking part in the chocolate tour made for an extraordinary and especially sweet, literally, experience. I relived my chocolate lover’s dream and I finally could say I had enough chocolate—well, maybe for a day.

This chocolate tour is for you if you like idea of eating desert first, if you are a hopeless chocoholic like me and the thought of tasting chocolate all morning makes you smile. For more information visit www.carolinafoodpros.com.

Vladia Jurcova is a travel writer, photographer and publicist. Born in Czechoslovakia, she is now based in Charleston, SC, where she owns a public relations firm. www.contessavladia.com.

Images by Vladia

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