chocolate: monsieur truffe

URL: http://monsieurtruffe.wordpress.com/
Physical: 90 Smith Street, Collingwood

Heard about this place for since its 2008 opening but never got around to actually going there. Smith Street is sorta kinda out of the way for me. Still, today I got out of class early and decided, out of nowhere, that it was time to visit Monsier Truffe. A nice day meant the walk down Elgin Street after a morning of being inside--I'm like a caged animal if I have to sit still too long--was, well, nice.

Monsier Truffe is a visually pleasing shop. I never thought I'd say something like that, but really, it's nice. It's clean. It's all about the chocolate. The focus is on single origin that contain varying levels of cocoa but they also sell, among other things, filled chocolate truffles, high quality cocoa powder and cooking chocolate. Most of the chocolate is their own but they also sell some a limited selection of well known brands like the excellent Valrhona.

The chocolate is expensive but not unreasonable. If you've ever paid $16 for 90 grams of Valrhona or chocolate of similar quality, $11 for a decent-sized bar shouldn't scare you too much. For $25 you can get sample packs that let you check out the spectrum of milk chocolates and dark chocolates or to appreciate the contrasts between different countries of origin. If you're not wanting to throw down that much on chocolate, you can get small bars for $3.50 apiece. The range isn't as great as their $11 bars but you can still move along the spectrum in small increments from white 'chocolate' to very dark chocolate.

Having spend too much money on expensive imported ham earlier in the day, I only bought two sample-sized bars: a 38% sourced from Costa Rica and a 65% from Venezuela. The 65% is nice but the 38% is brilliant. The combination of coffee and tea, present in both bars, is a nice addition.