April 2012

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2012.

Chocolate and wine taste orgasms, with all the complexity and depth of good lovemaking. Easily the very best I’ve ever had. Ever.

April 30, 2012 in Chantal Coady, Reviews, Rococo Life by Tom | Comments closed

Chocolate and wine – what could be finer

The Rococo Sea Salt Wafer and De Bortoli PHI Chardonnay was a good start – the Chardonnay brought out an unexpected creaminess in the dark chocolate wafer, leaving behind a lovely kick of crystalised salt on the tongue. How surprising! Not only in the creaminess, but also in that dark chocolate can be matched successfuly with white wine.

Chantal Coady, the founder of Rococo chocolates was one of the first of London’s new wave of artisanal chocolatiers, who opened in 1983. The original store in King’s Road is still there, but is now joined with a clutch of other special shrines to chocolate, in Marylebone High St, Motcomb St Belgravia, and the secret MaRococo garden and Chocolate School in Motcomb St.

I need to be clear here. I’m not talking about everyday chocolate; cheap chocoate that embalms your taste buds in cocoa butter. I’m talking taste orgasms, with all the complexity and depth of good lovemaking. Easily the very best I’ve ever had. Ever.

The range and quality of the Australian wines on show was also superb and certainly kicked any Kiwi wine rivalry into touch. Hey, when it’s this good, it would be dishonest to not just accept and admit it.

via Chocolate and wine – what could be finer.


Twitter / @LauraNickoll: Tempura oysters with choc dipping sauce

April 27, 2012 in Chantal Coady, Chocolate by Tom | Comments closed

Twitter / @LauraNickoll: Tempura oysters with choc ...

Tempura oysters with choc dipping sauce @rococochocs with a great shoot team. The book is going to be v. special.

via Twitter / @LauraNickoll: Tempura oysters with choc ….


Come and see our new house-made chocolate coffee beans at The London Coffee Festival 2012

April 27, 2012 in Events, Food Fairs by Tom | Comments closed


When: The London Coffee Festival will be held from 27-29 April 2012.
Where: 15 Hanbury Street, the Old Truman Brewery, London E1 6QR.

Rococo Chocolates

www.rococochocolates.com 

Rococo began the Real Chocolate Revolution in the UK in 1983. We now have 4 retail shops and many wholesale customers who will testify to the eclectic, sometimes eccentric but always delicious and beautifully presented chocolates and confectionery. Our hot drinking chocolate and milk chocolate covered Arabica coffee beans have a particular following among discerning baristas and along with our award winning ganaches will be available to taste at the Festival.

via The London Coffee Festival 2012 – Exhibitors 2012.


Rococo Chocolates little bars of heaven taste amazing and the packaging is charming, not to mention the flavors & combinations are endless.

April 27, 2012 in Chocolate by Tom | Comments closed

bar selection

Rose, chocolate… Oh gosh, how do I choose?  Not to worry, you can have both!  We just discovered these fancy little bars of heaven from the UK, called Rococo Chocolates.  They taste amazing and the packaging is charming, not to mention the flavors & combinations are endless.  Some of our personal favorites include the floral bars with jasmine, rose, violet, or lavender.  They carry interesting combination flavors like orange & geranium, or sea salt, as well as sugar & dairy free varieties.  These products make excellent wedding or shower favors, even bridesmaid’s gifts.

via Rococo Chocolates – Custom Florals, Event Design & Little Luxuries – Fiore Designs.


Rococo Chocolates in the Mayfair district in London, England. The smell is heavenly, the truffles divine and they teach classes

April 27, 2012 in Pretty Shop Windows, Rococo School by Tom | Comments closed

Rococo Chocolates in the Mayfair district in London, England. The smell is heavenly, the truffles divine and they teach classes on how to

Rococo Chocolates in the Mayfair district in London, England. The smell is heavenly, the truffles divine and they teach classes on how to…

The text ends there but you can find out more about what classes are available on our Rococo School events page.

via Rococo Chocolates in the Mayfair district in London, England. .


Coady is as passionate about her home as she is about quality chocolate.

April 26, 2012 in Chantal Coady by Tom | Comments closed

motcomb st

Chantal Coadys laundry room in her south London home used to be a chocolate factory. At least, it was formerly the space – a small, domestic kitchen – where she and an assistant made passionfruit truffles and cherry-studded chocolate bars for Rococo, the Kings Road fantasy chocolate shop she opened in 1983. Now she has two more London shops in Belgravia and Marylebone High Street, the signature blue-and-white boxes are in Waitrose and John Lewis, and her manufacturing is no longer in the laundry room but at a thirty-strong factory in Dulwich as well as Grenada, where she has a partnership with a cocoa cooperative to create fair-trade organic chocolate. "Like most children, after reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I dreamed of having my own chocolate factory. What was unusual was that I actually did it," she says proudly. Coady is as passionate about her home, a tall, skinny three-storey Victorian house – and the garden square in which she lives, Vauxhalls Bonnington Square – as she is about quality chocolate.

Visit the link below for dozens of great photos by Clive Nichols for a GAP interiors feature:

GAP Interiors – Specialising in interiors, lifestyle & homes.


ACHICA promotion starts at 7am Monday 23rd April and ends at 6.30am Wednesday 25th April

April 24, 2012 in Chocolate by Tom | Comments closed

ACHICA | ProductList

Winner of Chocolatier of the Year 2011 at the Academy of Chocolate Awards, Rococo Chocolates is known for its eclectic, delicious and sometimes eccentric chocolates, beautifully packaged, served with love and humour. In 1983 Chantal Coady decided there was room for a radically different approach to chocolate, one imbued with originality and romanticism that would treat the senses. Armed with a little knowledge and a dangerous passion for chocolate, she opened a chocolate paradise in London’s Kings Road. In 2002 Chantal discovered the chocolate from the Grenada Chocolate Company, a solar-powered organic tree-to-bar maker. All of the organic products made from the Rococo House Blend chocolate contain beans from the joint venture between Rococo and the GCC to produce fairly traded, ethical chocolate.

 

The Rococo promotion at ACHICA starts at 7am Monday 23rd April and ends at 6.30am Wednesday 25th April.

via ACHICA | ProductList.


Fresh Film Footage from Grenada: The Harvest of Grococo organic cocoa beans

April 23, 2012 in Fair Trade, Fair Transport, Grococo by Tom | Comments closed

Hopefully you’ve seen our films showing the process of creating the chocolates bars in what we think is a uniquely fair way where the people living where the beans are grown are also involved in the added value of processing the raw material into the finished chocolate. Here you can see the start of the process where William and his crew are harvesting the beans that will be dried on the farm. From there the beans are dried and processed into the finished bars ready for fair transport to a world that loves not only the chocolate that they produce, but the way it is made to maximise the benefit to the producers who know how to grow and make cocoa using the most sustainable methods.

This is the first time we’ve seen the harvest, thanks to Caroline Lubbers who has been documenting the passage of the beans from the tree right through to shipment on board the Tres Hombres. You can read more about her discoveries on her blog at The Grenada Chocolate Tales.

 


Australian Wine and Rococo Chocolates « The Secret Diary of a Czech Girl Living in London

April 20, 2012 in Events, Reviews by Tom | Comments closed

rococo whisk

Who has not tucked into an after-dinner chocolate whilst finishing off a glass of red and experienced a strange tingling sensation when the two tastes meet? Well I can tell you – wine and chocolate matching is quite a challenging task. You need to think not only about the flavours of wine and the chocolate but also about the perceived sweetness of each.  Should we try to match the two anyway?  Isn’t cheese the best match for wine at the end of a meal? Maybe, but there is something delicious and rather naughty in having a piece of fine dark chocolate with a sip of Sauternes.

My favourite wine to match with a variety of flavoured chocs was Innocent Bystander Moscato 2011 – a lightly sparkling sweet pinky from Victoria.  The refreshing sweetness and gentle strawberry and raspberry fruit flavours worked well with white chocolate cardamom & saffron ganache, sea salt wafer and red berry ganache.

PS. One tip I learned is that the best storage temperature for quality chocolates is at 17C, which is not easy to achieve. The closest I could find is my wine fridge at 14C. Funny that hey?

via Australian Wine and Rococo Chocolates « danigongoozler.


Persepolis Persopaedia Customer Profiles

April 20, 2012 in Chantal Coady, Rococo Life by Tom | Comments closed

We love this shop and their website – where our founder can be seen stocking up on essential ingredients to recreate the Khoreshts of her birthplace. We thought this affectionate characterisation of their various customers was reminiscent of our own experiences, and so reproduce it here for your amusement.

The Quick Fix:

This guy goes for a small selection of the sweetest, gloopiest most depraved little numbers. This apparent rampant sugar junkie is actually more in tune with his inner glucose demons than most of us – he knows what his body needs and chooses the most direct route to get it there. Either that or he has a hangover. Quick fixers are often sportsmen or students.

The Socialite:

This lady entertains and is entertained very regularly and is constantly looking for something new to offer guests or as a hospitality present. She usually goes for a moderately sized, beautifully ranged platter. And then realises that she can’t pick at it on the way home, and so has to have a modest side order of the same (for qualtiy control purposes only, you understand). This lady is great fun, if terrifyingly well organised.

The Diplomat:

“Ten of the same, please!” cries this fellow as he rushes in. He is constantly rushing… to board/committee/staff meetings. He has the potential, if not the time, to be quite cool. But slow down, man! And do you really want to be on the sort of committee where they’ll argue over who has what?

The Hedonist:

…will unashamedly choose a mismatched selection and linger over each choice because it is all for himself/herself. Sometimes the purchase is spontaneous, but regulars have confessed to planning their Persepolian moment. The strangest one that we’ve heard of yet is with Muscadet (v.cold), in the bath (v.hot, vanilla bath essence), with candles and Persian flute music (v. refined). Er, how do you eat yours?

The Sparrow:

Sidles into the shop and then agonises before selecting one or two of the most modest morsels. For goodness sake, if it’s a money thing, we’ll give them to you, and if it’s a diet thing, well life’s too short. So EAT, woman!

via Persepolis » Persopaedia.


Older entries