Is Nine O’clock In The Morning To Early For Chocolate?

By Fran Folsom

I am a chocoholic. Wherever I travel, I search out chocolate shops. My favorite hunting ground is New England, where I have come across many shops I like. But three shops stand out in my mind for their imagination and creativity and for the heavenly taste of their magnificent confections.

Burdick’s Chocolates
This Harvard Square shop in Cambridge, MA, is my weekly haunt, I love the tiny ganache-filled chocolate mice. My favorite way to eat them is by holding their satin tails, dangling them over my mouth and nibbling from their almond ears up.

Nestled up against the mice in gleaming glass cases are the chocolate penguins, looking dapper in their dark and white chocolate tuxedos. Burdick’s has two locations, Harvard Square, and their signature place in Walpole, NH, which not only has the chocolate shop, but also an award-winning French restaurant serving wonderful cuisine—truffle, fennel and apple salad, roast duckling or sea scallops with black tea and caviar.

Monica’s Chocolates
“Have you ever had chocolates made with Peruvian plums?” I asked my friend Fred as we walked into Monica’s Chocolate Shop in Lubec. ME, early one morning. Fred’s response, “Nine o’clock in the morning is to early for chocolate,” did nothing to deter me from my mission: starting my day with a healthy dose of chocolate.

“It’s never top early for chocolate” I told him.

Owner Monica Elliott, a native of Peru, emigrated to Lubec in 1999, bringing with her recipes for Peruvian caramel and chocolate. Monica makes all her chocolates by hand in her beautifully decorated shop.

Fred stopped complaining about the time of day when he devoured a raspberry wine truffle followed by a Sicilian marzipan covered with a bittersweet chocolate shell. I went straight for the jugular, a dark chocolate bonbon. Biting into a succulent plum surrounded by a rich Peruvian caramel, I rolled my eyes towards heaven. After that, I moved on to a pecan filled truffle and finished off with a cameo chocolate mint.

Lake Champlain Chocolates
To me, no visit to Burlington Vermont is complete without a stop at Lake Champlain Chocolates. The company was founded twenty-five years ago by Jim Lampman, a restaurant entrepreneur, who used to give gifts of expensive chocolates to his restaurant staff. 

One day his chef confessed that the chocolates were terrible, and Lampman challenged him to make something better. So he did. What the chef came up with were truffles made with dark Belgian chocolate and Vermont butter and cream. From those first truffles a chocolate factory was born.

The truffles, in flavors of cappuccino, vanilla malt, raspberry, and champagne, are fantastic. Much as I love the truffles, I would have to say the mainstay of Lake Champlain Chocolates is their Five Star Bars, dense chunky bars packed with fruits and nuts and covered in dark Belgian chocolate.

How good are the Five Star Bars? Well, Vogue magazine has named them “the ultimate chocolate bar” and they were featured in Steve Almond’s book Candyfreak.

A visit to any of these shops is what I imagine being turned loose in Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory would be like.

Visit www.burdickchocolate.com, www.monicaschocolates.com, www.lakechamplainchocolates.com

Fran Folsom is a travel journalist and guide book author in Cambridge Massachusetts.  Contact her at franfolsom@verizon.net

Photos courtesy of Burdick’s Chocolates, Monica’s Chocolates, and Lake Champlain Chocolates.

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