Chocolate – it’s no longer just for breakfast!

I just attended the San Francisco Fancy Food Show, an annual trade show, which attracts hundreds of gourmet food, beverage and snack manufacturers. The show is a launch pad for new products and is often a barometer of food trends that will be with us for the next year.

This year, you couldn’t miss the buzz over fiery foods; manufacturers have fueled their products with fiery hot exotic chilies. I found hot chilies added to crackers, extra-virgin olive oil, exotic organic teas and King’s Cupboard, of Red Lodge, Montana, even produces a rather tasty butterscotch sauce for ice cream that is flecked with spicy chilies. The sauce starts out with a rush of buttery rush of butterscotch and then after the swallow, there’s a strident, unrelenting heat that builds up at the back of your palate. Really wonderful stuff.

The item, though, which caught me completely by surprise wasn’t one of these fire-eater products, nor was it one of the many new exotic drinks being introduced at the trade show, each claiming to deliver something like a year’s supply of antioxidants in a single serving. No, the thing which caught me off guard was something far more commonplace – chocolate.

Although there is nothing commonplace about Amano Chocolate. Made in (of all places!) Orem, Utah, by a driven, passionate chocolate geek, Art Pollard, this is a line of some of America’s very best chocolate tablets. (I refuse to call them “bars,” because this makes consumers think they are in the league of a Hershey Bar, in price and quality; Amano chocolate “bars” are more like the chocolate “tablets,” which is what they’re called in Europe.)

With Amano, there is a striking similarity in packaging design and even in name to one of Italy’s very best chocolates – Amadei. But from my brief tasting and introduction to Amano at the trade show, I would have to say Art Pollard has surpassed what may have been his Italian inspiration: Amano is a full line of single-origin chocolates and my palate was in paradise as I ran Amano’s gourmet gamut:

Ocumare 70% Dark, made from cacao beans from a remote valley in Venezuela was my favorite Amano chocolate, which I scored 9. 8 out of 10. It’s more complex than a Dan Brown novel (which might not be such a hard hurdle to jump), but it certainly lingers infinitely longer than Brown’s literature.

Guayas 70% Dark was my next favorite Amano chocolate, made with cacao beans from the fertile Guyas River floodplain in Ecuador. Lots of smoke, green banana and a hint of berry at the finish. This one I scored 9.6 out of 10.

Madagascar 70% Dark, made from cacao beans from – duh – Madagascar, this chocolate has a wonderfully rich, plum-like finish.

Cuyagua 70% Dark is a very complex, very compelling, chocolate whose beans are sourced from Venezuela.

And the list of exotic origin chocolates continues. This story is not meant to be an exhaustive review of Amano chocolates – rather public recognition of a great American chocolate-maker.

 I guess the proof that Amano has “finally made it to Prime Time” is that two different Amano “tablets” have just been introduced in Starbucks across the country. Of the two offerings, I prefer the dark chocolate tablet; the milk chocolate tablet is just too sweet to satisfy my personal chocolate cravings.

As February (and Valentine’s Day specifically) is when chocolate hedonistsule, I thought it might be fun to share a hedonistic, chocolate-based, alcohol-stained drink to share with a special someone.

Chocolate Hedonist's Hot Chocolate Recipe - "...this is an alcohol-based chocolate beverage, meant to be served after dinner, or for breakfast if that special someone stays over for the night and is still with you in the morning!"