The International Chocolate Salon in San Francisco

It was my friend's 40th birthday this weekend. We celebrated with a trip to the International Chocolate Salon and then I made dinner at my apartment in South City.

I feel like I should have more to say about the chocolate salon, but pretty freshly off a trip to Paris, this event in San Francisco had a few standouts, and a few items I would have put into a trashcan after a small bite if convenience allowed. I couldn't help feeling like it wasn't all that international, and that there could have been more representation from around the U.S. Why not just a local chocolate salon? My pedantic tendancies aside, those little thoughts lived in direct opposition to time spent at the Poco Dolce table scarfing up 3 or 4 toffee squares. It was easy to lose count. The buttery, salty toffee, and perfectly dark, but not too bitter, chocolate was my favorite thing at the salon. It was in close competition with the passion fruit truffles at Cocoa Bella, but not everyone is as obsessed with passion fruit as I am. Not that all the chocolates weren't good, it's just that I am too well-fed to go wasting calories on anything less than "take these away or "move these". Whatever it is i'm yelling at my sister or husband when there is something i just can't stop eating. My husband, who is sick of my belly-aching after just too much Liguria foccacia or my friend's chocolate cake, lovingly obliges.

I have to admit that I discovered Poco Dolce in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the Formaggio Kitchen. My husband and I lived there for a few/several years recently. I miss Formaggio dearly now that I do not live within a ten minute drive or 30 minute walk of a gourmet emporium that but for it's size could rival Le Grande Epicerie Paris. When I miss Boston, that is often what I miss, my old special occasion food routines: Formaggio, Dave's Fresh Pasta, L.A. Burdick's in Harvard Square. Deep, dark, hot chocolate that brings on a sugar high that possesses qualities that seem to be unique to the compounds specifically found in chocolate. Too much seratonin activity? It's much more than sugar, the science is there, no? More than an entire salon of chocolate, I just want one Burdick's, but with more tables. This is San Francisco, there has to be something like that here, even if the snow and freezing rain of winter don't drive people from the Harvard-Yale game in in droves.

I bought enough Poco to last me through my next few real and imagined chocolate cravings, but the Cocoa Bella is gone. My sister told me they have an outlet on Union Street near where she works, so I guess I'll be stopping by to meet her for lunch as soon as I find the time, and the parking space.