Nobody knows the truffles I've seen.
That's because most people have not spent a day running around to a bevy of brand new chocolate shops, ogling things like hazelnut-lime-infused-72%-cocoa-content-bittersweet-chocolate bonbons, vowing, "This time, I am NOT going to miss the HUGE TREND STARING ME IN THE FACE!"
I.e., chocolate. Trust me, fancy candy is going to be the Cinnabon of the 21st century, and I should know!
Having, ahem, learned from my mistakes.
Let's just say that about 15 years ago, my editor made me write an article: "Gourmet Coffee, the Next Big Thing?"
I interviewed a couple of coffee nuts who had opened cafes in Seattle and quickly concluded: The next big thing? No way! Who's going to be stupid enough to pay $1 for a cup of java? Who cares what country a coffee bean comes from? Who's got time to sit in a cafe, anyway? And who, pray tell, wants a cardboard "java jacket" wrapped around her cup? Sounds like a toilet paper roll! "Gourmet coffee" — ha! I never gave it a second thought!
Until I started tithing $1.79 every afternoon to Starbucks.
So now I am a bit more open-minded when staring down a megatrend. And let me tell you: Chocolate is staring back.
Like bottled water, balsamic vinegar, crusty bread, herbal tea, grainy mustard ... okay, like every other once-generic food, chocolate is soaring upscale. Just look around — provided you are looking around hip areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn — and you will see gourmet chocolate shops springing up like mango-coriander truffles.
These — along with their raspberry — and chile — flavored brethren — are about the size of a pat of butter and cost $1.35 each at Chocolate Bar, a cute West Village shop that has been at the forefront of this trend.
"When we first opened two years ago," says Alison Nelson, the skinny-as-a-Hershey bar owner, "the first thing people said was, 'Wow, that's a lot of money for a small piece of chocolate!' And now those same people come in and don't think twice."
Just like me at Starbucks!
Except I always think twice.
But Nelson has a point: As fancy chocolates like hers start springing up, people try them and tastes begin to change. How you gonna keep 'em down at the Nestle's Crunch after they've tried a $4 "Bittersweet, 60% Cocoa Content, Ghana Origins" bar from the new Jacques Torres supershop in SoHo? Or his "20% Ivory Coast, 80% Ecuador" blend?
You can't! At least, I don't think you can. Can you? Oh, maybe you can. I don't know! I've been wrong before! But this time, I feel it right down to my java jacket.
That's why I'm working on a brand new kind of chocolate holder: the bonbon bonnet.
