HotChocolate

Picking up where I last left you- still in Chicago, still satiated by my Italian Beef Sandwich from Portillo's, and now wanting dessert- my friend and I decided that we would try out HotChocolate Restaurant & Dessert Bar.

Owned by chef Mindy Segal who has received multiple Best Pastry Chef nominations from the James Beard Foundation, this Wicker Park hot spot was bopping the night we patronized it. Filled to capacity and dimly lit, my one complaint about the space was that it needed sound absorbers! I could not even hear myself speak over the buzz of the restaurant.

Since we were at a dessert bar called HotChocolate, it only made sense to order its namesake.

After mulling over our choices, which included the Black and Tan (1/3 hot fudge and 2/3 medium hot chocolate), the Medium ( milk chocolate with a touch of dark chocolate and a hint of caramel) and the Half and Half (1/2 espresso and 1/2 dark chocolate); we settled on ordering the Dark Chocolate.

Made with 72% French Chocolate and served with house made marshmallows, the Dark Chocolate Hot Chocolate was quite lovely- intense, deep and dark- definitely my kind of chocolate.

As much as I loved the Dark Hot Chocolate, my favorite thing from this drink was the house made marshmallow. Pillowly-soft and not too sweet, this is the stuff marshmallow dreams are made of.  While the sweetness of the marshmallow was the perfect balance to the bitter dark chocolate,  I must admit that I enjoyed the marshmallows much more on their own then in the hot chocolate.

On a side note, while we had ordered one hot chocolate to share, we were served a big cup each of the drink. Initially, we were upset as we thought that our server had put in two orders of Dark Chocolate for us. However, upon inspection of the bill, we were only charged for one and our server had split it in two for us. As such, I must note that at $6 a cup, this hot chocolate was quite worth it. In the realm of expensive fancy hot chocolate that is.

Besides the hot chocolate, we also split an order of their raspberry and ice cream sandwich made with la choulette framboise red velvet cake, preserved local raspberry and Zingerman's cream cheese ice cream, raspberry caramel and raspberry cream cheese buttercream.

With such a fancy name/description, you would think that this dessert would be divine, with complex levels of flavors. On the contrary, the plate offered lackluster cake that was mushy and tasteless. The ice cream while interesting, did not really add anything to the sandwich. Furthermore, the buttercream filling had a weird after taste. Bah!

Details:
Mindy's HotChocolate
1747 N Damen Ave
Chicago, IL 60647
773-489-1747