731 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14203
Web: Chow Chocolat
Phone: 716.843.4388
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Buffalo Chocolate Coffee Desserts
"We loved the gingerbread piece. The outside was plain white chocolate, the inside a nutmeg and ginger ganache, surpassing the Jasmine's similarly unexpected fusion of flavors."
For a moment, as you walk in the door of a new place you've only heard a little about, it's hard to know what to expect - the menu, the seating, the ambience are momentarily all in the air. That's why we were taken off guard as we walked into Chow Chocolat, which sits within visual distance of Shea's in downtown Buffalo, discovering that it wasn't as much a dessert-focused restaurant as a coffee shop with a selection of chocolate candies. We weren't even sure what to order. So we asked behind the counter for advice.
The gentleman pointed us towards a small display window with individual, dainty pieces of chocolate inside, most of them stacked and labeled with paper. There were the expected options - one a rectangle of caramel, one a rounded square of milk chocolate, another a rounded square of dark chocolate. Then there were the modest surprises, one a brown, almost red ball-shaped truffle of cognac, another a rounded square called Jasmine tea. And finally, there was a light brown square marked with gingerbread men. We passed only on pieces marked Grand Marnier; the orange liqueur has never done anything for us.
Our first pass through the chocolates, sold for $1.39 each, wasn't exactly a revelation, but it was powerful. These chocolates were obviously the products of caring attention; the delicious caramel was topped with sea salt, forcing your tongue to trade flavors and appreciate the true sweetness of both the chewy center and its thinner chocolate body. Other chocolates were more decoratively marked, snowflakes atop the milk and dark, leaves above the Jasmine, and each had a softer, even tastier ganache center than its outside.
We weren't blown away by the cognac ball. But we really liked the Jasmine piece, which somehow managed to precisely fuse the delicate essence of the Chinese tea with a mild chocolate. And we loved - seriously, loved - the gingerbread piece. The outside was plain white chocolate, the inside a nutmeg and ginger ganache, surpassing the Jasmine's similarly unexpected fusion of flavors. For a change, the most visually interesting piece was also the best tasting.
Color us impressed. Chow Chocolat wasn't a shop-and-go Watson's or Palace of Sweets. It also wasn't a half-candy, half-dessert shop like Alethea's, or a full-fledged dessert restaurant akin to Dessert Deli or Chocolate Bar. It felt like the start of something more fun, a coffee and candy shop with personality. There was live music in the place when we visited that Saturday night, art from a very talented local artist hanging on the wall, and small clusters of customers - families, other performers waiting for the open mic, and us - sitting at the place's few tables. The drink menu was a mix of coffees, hot chocolates, and tea; we sipped on the latter, strolled around to look at the art, and made another pass through the chocolates, getting extra pieces of gingerbread and a bag of the restaurant's bagged, chocolate-covered espresso beans, found on the wall with small batches of other prepackaged candies. Not surprisingly, they were good. A little expensive, but good.
Our stop at Chow Chocolat set two of us back around $20 - roughly the same that we'd spend on desserts and accompanying non-alcoholic drinks at another place, though this was a decidedly different experience: a small, sweet meal in bite-sized pieces. It wasn't what we'd expected before we walked in the door. And it seemed, based on its limited menu, a little too nascent at this stage for us to rate it as a "restaurant." But, even if it's only to pick up boxes of chocolates as gifts, we'll be back.
