Chef Gabriel Kreuther and his pastry chef Marc Aumont recently opened a luxury chocolate shop, Kreuther Handcrafted Chocolate, located next door to Chef Kreuther’s proper restaurant.
It’s a great place to duck away from the crowds of Bryant Park or a holiday shopping break from Fifth Avenue. The moment I stepped into ths beautiful shop, I see the glass encased chocolate workshop and the large display cases toward the back showcasing the jewel-like chocolate bonbons and bars and a separate pastry case filled with trays of cheesecake macarons, eye-catching colorful pastries, and uniquely shaped travel cakes that are essentially pound cakes that are skinnier and longer than the familiar loaf cake shape and much more prettily topped.
To warm myself up, I started off with their house made hot chocolate made from their chocolate ganache. It’s a delicious, drinkable hot chocolate that isn’t too sweet, and not too thick and dense.
The chocolate menu has broken down to four categories — Single (as in single origin or single flavor with the chocolate), Double (two flavors with the chocolate), Praline, and Molded (shaped as half macarons). I’ve entrusted the staff to pick my plate of chocolates since I’m indecisive when I have too many options. All of the chocolates were sublime. Great textures (the particular snap when eaten perfectly tempered chocolate and it melts in the mouth immediately) and incredible, potent flavors and for some, flavor combinations. (If you’re wondering what chocolates I had: Honey saffron, Lime, Apricot and bergamot, Raspberry and licorice, Cherry, lime and vanilla, Almond and vanilla, Peanut salted caramel, Passion fruit caramel and Tahitian vanilla, Dulce de coco and pineapple, and Bananas foster.)
On the pastry front, no doubt it’s fantastic. The two pastries — Decadent and Fleur du Temps — are the best selling pastries (and in some aspects a yin and yang combination), I’ve been told and I understand why. The Decadent is an incredibly rich and chocolate-y dessert made of dark chocolate mousse, red fruit gelée on a brownie base. The fruit fruit gelée saved the dessert to be too overwhelmingly chocolate-y. Fleur du Temps is a light pastry of two layers of pistachio biscuit cake filled with ethereally light white chocolate mousse and raspberry gelée to give some acidity and contrast to all things sweet and nutty. This pastry is then speckled in colorful edible flower petals and a few shards of white chocolate. It’s gorgeous and looks and tastes like spring time in cake form.
I also had to have the Mont Blanc Trifle (as I’ve mentioned in recent posts, I love chesnuts during wintertime). This trifle was amazing and light as air with a touch of zip of currants. The trifle layers were chestnut crémeux, vanilla mascarpone and red currant gelée.
For the Christmas season, Kreuther Handcrafted Chocolate created a stunning chocolate and caramel bûche de Noël. Trust me, it will bring compliments when you serve this for dessert both for looks and taste.
For more photos of this visit, please CLICK HERE for the complete set or see below:
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Kreuther Handcrafted Chocolate
Website
43 W 42nd Street
(between 5th and 6th Avenue)
New York, NY 10036
Phone: (212) 201-1985