Ripe London

24 Hours

Behold the last cup of thick hot chocolate that touched my lips before I commence my 21-day cleanse tomorrow. Can you see the “skin” on top, already starting to pucker like a big, wet kiss?  Can you appreciate the way it stretches across the cup, hugging it in a desperate embrace?  This is Carluccio’s Cioccolato Fiorentino, and its deep colour played warmly against the gloves I bought from, where else, Florence.

As I took my time with this hot chocolate and let it have its way inside my mouth – letting it pool under my tongue in the same way you’d taste wine – I thought about partings.  I knew that I would only go without this passion of mine for a while, much like the drawn-out goodbye before a beloved leaves for a trip.  The promise of a reunion makes the longing more bearable. We should, of course, actually taste each moment as if it were that last drop of chocolate.

I’m very good at appreciating the wonderful foods I’m fortunate enough to try every day.  But I’m often guilty of not savouring the goodness my day-to-day life serves up.  In Quantum Wellness, Freston says it takes 21 days to re-train your tastebuds.  Appreciation is likewise a habit.  For the next three weeks, as I let go of those favourites I overindulge in, I hope to develop more awareness and gratitude for the many other ways in which the universe fills my cup.

The Whole Truth

We love the things we love for what they are.
–Robert Frost

Oh, the lessons.  How mercilessly yet lovingly they come.  Heartbreaking, bittersweet, utterly necessary.

I am tasting the hot chocolate at Paul for the second time in a week. This time I’ve gone for the large.  That’s the kind of impression it made.

The skin has already started to set and pucker.  Tick.  It’s thin enough to drink, thick enough to spoon.  Tick.  It hugs the inside of the cup as it does the back of my throat.  Tick.  It tastes deeply of chocolate with a light touch of je ne sais quoi.  Tick.

As I tip the cup one final time to get the last drop, I wonder what the recipe might be and if I could get it.  Then my heart sinks as I think: copious cream, unscrupulous sugar.  But then it dawns on me:  the sum of this hot chocolate would never be so wonderful were it not for all its parts: the sinful as well as the seductive.

Last week, a new friend shared some wisdom from, believe it or not, Mike Myers.  He said something like this:  true love comes in three stages.  First, there is love without knowledge.  This is when we project our fantasies onto someone we barely know, thus creating that initial giddiness.  Then comes knowledge without love.  Here is where we find out that the screen we projected our fantasies onto is actually a real person, one who in all likelihood has been brought into our lives to mirror back to us what we secretly don’t like about ourselves and vice versa.  Initial attraction is actually nature’s clever trick to get us to this second stage so that we come face to face with ourselves via another, deal with our demons, and grow. 

Sticking it out at this stage is like boiling maple sap into syrup: it bubbles up a lot of uncomfortable stuff, but the rewards are ultimately sweeter than what you started with.  It only happens when we trust in the process and give each other the unconditional acceptance we want for ourselves.  It’s all too easy to bail at this point, but then you miss the third stage and the icing on the cake: love with knowledge.

In other words, ignorance is lust.  It’s acceptance – loving what is – that’s bliss.

Paul is now my pick for high street hot chocolate – warts and all, drop for drop.

High and Dry

Have you ever had a broken rib?  You can’t see what’s wrong on the outside, but oh can you feel it.  You’re hyper aware of even the smallest movements, and deep breaths are difficult.  Sometimes you forget the pain, but all too soon you remember.  You laugh, and then it hurts again.  The only thing that will heal it is time, and lots of it.  No wonder having a broken rib is likened to having a broken heart.  It’s also what the hot chocolate at l’apostrophe is like.

I finally got around to trying what Time Out calls “best of London’s high-street brands” for hot chocolate.  In retrospect, I should have thought about this claim a little more.  Aside from Paul (which is still on my list), I didn't think any high-street standbys did the thick stuff.  Ah, that’s my problem.  Somewhere between my visits to Ladurée and Granada I have come to view thick hot chocolate as the only kind of hot chocolate.

Well, l’apostrophe is definitely thick.  It looks the part.  It sits in the cup with a plop and even has that shiny “skin” settled on top.  All looks good from the outside.  But l’apostrophe’s hot stuff, once it touches your tongue, falls apart like a fractured rib.  The texture is right, but it doesn’t taste chocolaty to me at all.  I kept drinking it – yes, even spooning it at times since it was so thick – but the closer I got to the bottom of the cup, the further I got from hitting the spot.  It was hot.  It was thick.  But chocolate, it wasn’t.

Contrast this with the bowl (yes, bowl) I tried at Hotel Chocolat, a place I’ve long considered too posh and self-conscious.  As you’ll see from the photo, no shiny skin on top, which means it looses points on thickness, though thin it wasn’t.  But this stuff scores on real chocolate flavour.  It was so rich, in fact, that it was almost grainy.  Shame the place feels more like a Perspex chair than a cozy sofa.

Will l’apostrophe recover by adding more chocolate oomph a la Hotel Chocolat?  Only time will tell, of course.   Do I have to settle for texture or flavour?  Nope, especially not when Ladurée still outshines on both criteria and is cheaper than either of these two places. 

l’apostrophe and Hotel Chocolat are on a high street near you.

Mucho Corazón

If the Spanish tourism authority hired me to write a strapline, it would be easy: Spain is for Sharing. 

Last weekend I went to Granada for a friend’s wedding, and while I’m fluent in the language, I found it more difficult travelling alone than I did in Thailand.  Why?  Portions.  As I sat down to a heaping plate of calamares and the joyful sounds that reminded me of my familia, I longed to have them share this with me.

One of our family favourites is churros y chocolate, and it just so happens I was staying in an area well known for them.  Churros, for the sadly uninitiated, are fat pieces of fried dough, served alongside ridiculously thick hot chocolate.  It’s more like pudding.  The French have nothing on this.

My search began at breakfast, conveniently right outside my hotel at an outdoor café.  Unsurprisingly, a huge bunch of churros accompanied a comparatively small mug of the dark stuff.  The spoon resting alongside it wasn’t for adding sugar – this chocolate was too thick too drink.  But as I dipped the churros in it, I closed my eyes and convinced myself that this was, indeed, what I was looking for: the ultimate chocolate caliente, and right on the steps of my hotel!  I left satisfied, believing this was it – that no other chocolate would do.  Nevermind how thick it was.  Or that the churros were rather dull and I didn’t have room for more than a quarter of them.

The next morning – or nearly noon if I'm honest – I stepped into the Spanish sunshine and went straight for the convenient café.  Then something told me to keep going.  I walked around the plaza.  No sign of churros y chocolate.  I walked a bit more and eyed what other places were serving.  Nope.  “I guess that café was it after all,” I thought.  But then I walked a bit further.  I ignored the rumblings just under my heart.  And I listened to something within it that told me to keep searching.

Then I rounded a corner and spotted a friendly, busy place with an empty table by the door and a sign saying they did half portions of churros.  I ordered mine with a required cup of you know what, and when I looked down at it, I knew.  Even before I lifted it up to my lips, I knew.  Thick enough to dip, thin enough to drink.  And a plate of churros just my size. Oh, the joys I would have missed had I settled for that other café!  It took me a couple of times around the block, but I had found it.

The other strapline contender: Spain is for Soul Searching.

Hot Chocolate, Cold Turkey

…No contest, really. 

The only way I’ve ever been able to relate to smokers is via sugar.  I know it's not good for me, and I'm getting better at cutting back; but I still do it.  So when the news broke that they were going to put disease graphics on cigarette packs, I instantly knew it wouldn’t work.  It would be like slapping obesity images on chocolate bars.  I’d still eat them.  Wouldn’t you?

Last week I did a yoga teacher training workshop in SoHo.  For three days I was immersed in the philosophy of acceptance and appreciation versus attachment and aversion.  So what do I do at lunchtime?  Head straight over to Ladurée in Piccadilly.  Granted, my excuse was that I was buying a gift from this most famous little jewel, the same shop I hit on my tour de chocolat chaud in Paris.  Once there and macaroons chosen for my present, I asked if they also happened to sell their hot chocolate mix.  “Well,” said the girl, “You can buy this cocoa powder here, but we also have the hot chocolate to go in paper cups.”

What?

You mean the slinky, thick, almost-molten-chocolate-bar-that-clings-to-the-inside-of-the-cup hot chocolate, in a paper cup?  Something so precious, to be slurped in the Smoke like Starbucks?  I couldn’t believe it. 

I brought my little box of macaroons to the till and asked for my takeaway. Then I took it outside and perched on the steps outside the Royal Academy, taking each mouthful in slowly, drag by drag.

Ladurée is at 71-72 Burlington Arcade, W1J 0QX.  Amazingly, the hot chocolate is only £2 a hit.