Raising the Bar...Theo Chocolate of Seattle

Every Fourth of July, our sons throw a huge party, with scores of their college buddies coming to town from across the US. For the past eight years running, one group of Harvard girls has brought me, via a classmate who works in New York, a big box of Leonidas chocolates. You see, Leonidas have been my favorite chocolates since I discovered them more than 30 years ago on a visit to Brussels where they are made. I love the super-fresh, butter-cream nuggets that are sold, refrigerated, just a day or so after they’re created, with a warning to enjoy within two weeks.

The Madison Avenue Leonidas shop was the first in the U.S. and remains the big daddy. Though there are now a handful of Leondias cafes around the country and a brisk mail order business, the purist in me only wants chocolates, hand-delivered, still cool, from the Madison Avenue store.

Every July I revel anew in the Manon, a dark chocolate praliné with coffee butter cream and a whole hazelnut on top. I swoon over the Africa, a dark chocolate ganache scented with orange and covered with chocolate vermicelli. And I cry when the last Coupe Tiramisu, a milk chocolate cup filled with praline, brown-sugar biscuit, and Amaretto-flavored ganache, is gone.

But this year, the cherished Leonidas bonbons had serious competition for my affections. Another party guest, from Seattle, brought me a box of eight picture-perfect confections from Theo Chocolate. She had recently taken a tour of the factory and picked up a box to share with me.

In a word, wow!  Theo chocolates are petite packages that pack a lot of flavor. They’re dainty.  Elegant. Subtle. It would be easy to pop a whole one in your mouth and munch. But these are handmade, sweet cream-based chocolates that should be nibbled slowly, allowing the chocolate to melt on your tongue, the multiple flavors to reveal themselves, the rich, velvety consistency to drive you mad.

And the flavors. Oh, my. There’s a heavenly Burnt Sugar bonbon, a mint ganache that smells like it was just picked from the herb garden, a raspberry cream to die for. The seasonal basil cream is a celebration of summer. The Caramel Collection includes salted caramel enrobed in dark chocolate and sprinkled with microns of crushed red chile and sea salt, as well as Rose and Lavender Salted Caramels.  (There are also some exciting bars such as the Fig, Fennel and Almond.) Since Theo bonbons are cream-based, they are supposed to be kept cool and enjoyed within 2 weeks. I decided to leave mine at room temperature and eat all eight pieces in four days…two each night, in a deliberate and delicious ritual.

The folks at Theo Chocolate spend a lot of time and Web page space touting their “unwavering commitment to changing the way the cocoa industry conducts business.” But, though I’m impressed that they’re “The Only Organic, Fair Trade, Bean-to-Bar Chocolate Factory in the U.S.,”  it’s really the flavor and fabulous consistency of THEO chocolates that have made me a fervent fan.

Don’t get me wrong. I certainly haven’t eaten my last fat, fabled Leonidas ganache. In fact, I look forward to my gift next Fourth of July. But it’s unlikely that I’ll wait that long to sample again the ethereal treasures of Theo.

Comments

[Martha]

I once sat in my Belgian girlfriend's seaside apartment in Belgium and after we put the children to bed we got out our box of Leonidas chocolates from the refrigerator. We sat across from each other at the little kitchen table, and with a cutting board and a knife, one by one, we took a chocolate, cut it in half and ate it together. We didn't stop, we ate the whole box. We laughed, looked at each other, and ate another. Delicious (sigh). The last time I had one. It soothed my broken heart, a little.