Bond Street
Impact
Bond Street Chocolate is actually located on East 4th Street... just keeping up with the neighbors like Rivington Guitars a couple doors down also on the same block (Rivington being a street a few short blocks to the south).
Confused?
Just part of the natural state of NYC’s East Village to make everyone feel happily disoriented.
The chocolates emanating from this shop are likewise right at home: a ragged jag sometimes leading to an oblivious late-night/early morning bender in Alphabet City off to the east, then waking up the next morning to recount how that was the best time ever... that you can’t remember... until you repeat the loop... right back at it for the new day.
Confused?
Just part of the natural state of NYC’s East Village to make everyone feel happily disoriented.
The chocolates emanating from this shop are likewise right at home: a ragged jag sometimes leading to an oblivious late-night/early morning bender in Alphabet City off to the east, then waking up the next morning to recount how that was the best time ever... that you can’t remember... until you repeat the loop... right back at it for the new day.
Presentation 4.3 / 5
jewel-boxing; soft-burnished / tight-fitting pieces
Aromas 4.1 / 5
airborne chocolate from a distance; cocoanut leather on the close-up
Textures/Melt 8.8 / 10
| Shells: | medium-gauge yet crushingly soft, almost w/ a pre-melt start |
| Centers: | slides effortlessly across the palate |
Flavor 39.2 / 50
free-style; the alcohols pour a little too overly-fortified, while herbal offerings are complexed at world-class levels though clarity somewhat compromised by Guittard's vanilla-driven couverture
Quality 23.9 / 30
Uneven – some pieces pretty angular & austere, others of tremendous geometry showing loads of daring & promise
Selections
Elderflower - components engage in a canceling effect; Dark-over-White cream ganache; evasive, unpronounced, & inconsequential
Absinthe - fine sequential flow from chocolate -> cream -> to green alcohol; runs hot yet maintains rum-like smoothness throughout incl a deft recombinant end flush
Tequila – made from the pale golden-amber of Tanteo Tequila which comes w/ resident chocolate tones already onboard but the pairing here eliminates its pineapple & coconut notes for a tougher, harder kindred spirit of the Absinthe piece (above) to make a chocolate flambée that burns out in serrano pepper to spiced móle, then a spiked desert-dry raw cacáo
Mint - highly herbal, perhaps a blend of spearmint as well as peppermint, matched seemingly to a bacon-smoked chocolate in another version of a móle; exceptional Rooibis – smoked-cocoa heightens a very elaborate complex of sweetly malted nuts so characteristic to Rooibis tea, especially of the tannin-reducing oxidized-leaves variety; subtle in its intricacy, bold in flavor force, & overall sensational
Wasabi - salt cuts chocolate down to scale until wasabi reduces both in a nasal-mustard to a umami fade combining the best of Bond Street’s worlds: a fortified complex
Reviewed Spring 2010
Absinthe - fine sequential flow from chocolate -> cream -> to green alcohol; runs hot yet maintains rum-like smoothness throughout incl a deft recombinant end flush
Tequila – made from the pale golden-amber of Tanteo Tequila which comes w/ resident chocolate tones already onboard but the pairing here eliminates its pineapple & coconut notes for a tougher, harder kindred spirit of the Absinthe piece (above) to make a chocolate flambée that burns out in serrano pepper to spiced móle, then a spiked desert-dry raw cacáo
Mint - highly herbal, perhaps a blend of spearmint as well as peppermint, matched seemingly to a bacon-smoked chocolate in another version of a móle; exceptional Rooibis – smoked-cocoa heightens a very elaborate complex of sweetly malted nuts so characteristic to Rooibis tea, especially of the tannin-reducing oxidized-leaves variety; subtle in its intricacy, bold in flavor force, & overall sensational
Wasabi - salt cuts chocolate down to scale until wasabi reduces both in a nasal-mustard to a umami fade combining the best of Bond Street’s worlds: a fortified complex
Reviewed Spring 2010