Chocopologie

We had another date night and it was as if I walked into the pages of one of my food magazines or onto a Food Network special. Mama had heard of this cafe in SoNo that focuses on chocolate, Chocopologie, and we decided to go for date night with Gommie babysitting.Just reading the menu online had us salivating and restricting our food intake for days before the date. And I fully intended to have dessert for all my courses. And I did.

Chocopologie is in the cutesy urban area of SoNo that is trying so hard to be Connecticut's version of hip NYC. It's young, lots of restaurants, loud music--but so clean, lacking in traffic or car horn sounds or sirens, and devoid of curiously questionable people that you would never mistake it for the real thing. I'd say it was safe but with so few people off the main part of Main Street, I doubt it's as safe as Time Square at midnight. The restaurant itself has a several tables upfront, the counter, and a long gallery for viewing chocolate production during the day. I'm not sure what you'd call the decor--it's some kind of chic, but not ultra-modern. I'm not up on decor terminology.

But I can describe the food. Which is funny, because my first dish--chocolate truffle beignets--left me speechless. These hot doughnuts came out with a fondue fork, but the batter wasn't chocolate as I'd expected, but regular Cafe Du Monde dough--only filled with melted chocolate. And something else. Was it honey? Nuts? A liqueur? I couldn't place it, so I asked. Pistachio. Pistachio truffle. They take one of their high-end truffles, wrap it in beignet mix, and fry it. I think it's the most amazing dessert I've ever had. Even Mama ate two of them and she's not a huge chocolate fan.

She was eating a croque monsieur with french fries. And truffle oil mayonnaise. Now, I will blow my cover as a foodie (which you'll remember I never claim to be--I'm not adventurous enough) when I say I've never had truffle anything before, of the fungal not cocoa variety. But I might be a convert. The earthiness mixed with the tartness of the mayo and the salty-crunchy of the fries was the perfect counterpoint to my chocolate.

Oh, and we were drinking chocolate too--Mama got a frozen hot chocolate. We've had one before, at Serendipity 3 in NYC--but that is a sweet sugary huge kid's version. This drink is the adult's version--dark chocolate flavor, not too much sugar, just the right size. Really quite perfect (even better slightly melted so that the ice isn't so obvious).

Then we moved on to dessert! What they call the chocolate love--a plate with four small chocolate desserts--a rich, flavorful and not bitter chocolate ice cream; a warm "molten" chocolate cake; a delicious chocolate mousse that was so smooth it was almost chocolate butter; and a chocolate Napoleon with little florentine cookies and ganache (the chewy cookies overwhelmed the ganache and were the night's weakest point). Wow.

Then--and I know you're thinking, "then?!"--I had their Chocopologie coffee with lavender foam. It was like eating Provence. I eventually just spooned the foam off the top, too full to drink the mocha coffee (even though it was delicious too). I just couldn't believe the foam. I'm sure it's just lavender-steeped milk made frothy but it was the essence of lavender. Though it's no molecular gastronomic trick, I couldn't help think of Ferran Adria and the foams you hear about.

So, we ended the night by purchasing a t-shirt, which I am wearing right now that says "Chocolate Lover" (and which I had the audacity to wear to my WW weigh-in today, which could've been worse but wasn't good), and several truffles to indulge in over the next several nights--rosewater, lemon, Grand Marnier, orange rum, pistachio, violet.

We even got the babysitter a little something!