Ok, to you and I a chocolate bar is a slab of delicious chocolate that we love to sink our teeth into. But at The Peninsula in Chicago, a Chocolate Bar is a decadent chocolate emporium that engages all of your senses – including your imagination!
Tasting chocolate is a multi-sensory experience. Chocolate at The Pen tempts you with the irresistible site of dark seduction, allowing the cocoa to luxuriate across your palate with a variety of sensations from thick and exotic to warm, silky and luscious. As the chocolate aromas fill your palate it travels up to your olfactory senses where the true aromas can be tasted during and after each mouthful and finally the taste. The taste of chocolate tickles your endorphins to pleasure your body and soul completely. Yes, chocolate can do all of that!
The Peninsula is celebrating a 10-year history of chocolate focused events with their brand new Chocolate Bar. It makes perfect sense. Every Friday and Saturday from 8 pm on to midnight there are chocolate stations that seduce chocolate lovers with luscious creations of chocolate prepared by their Executive Pastry chef and Chocolate Sommelier, Dimitri Fayard. “It’s not just about chocolate but what you can do with it,” explains partner in chocolate crime, Executive Chef Mike Wehrle.
Chocolate at The Pen not only offers amazing creations crafted from various grades of cocoa from around the world, but it’s an interactive event that allows consumers to design and craft their own chocolate bar. From dark to light, sweet to spicy customers get to choose their ingredients, experiment and experience something new.
The hot chocolate station within the Chocolate at The Pen is another interactive experience. It’s a not-just-for-adults station where you choose from 4 grades of chocolate from milk to serious black and bitter. Once the pure chocolate pellets are whisked into a steamy, copper pot of whole milk, you can choose between a dusting of cinnamon, cayenne pepper or vanilla sugar – or go wild and have all 3! Top it with a few mini marshmallows that swell and yield into the dreamy cup of cocoa and add a few dollops of pure, sweet, whipped cream – yum!
If you’re not into designing your own hot chocolate or building your own chocolate bar, custom make a chocolate martini from chocolate crème de mente to a dark Godiva martini or my favourite, Bailey’s chocolate martini! Each one fills your mouth with dreamy, liquid silk that slithers down your throat erotically.
With martini in hand, walk through the selection of outrageous chocolate pastries – nice to see such stunning chocolate pastries outside Paris. It could be a complete meal starting with a mango white chocolate mousse leading into a finger milk chocolate ganache tart and an accompanying handful of cocoa dusted almonds. End it with a warm chocolate crepe oozing with pastry crème, hot fudge sauce, salted caramel sauce and kissed with Grand Marnier or sneak a few chocolate truffles from the truffle tree. At The Peninsula, a diet of chocolate is possible!
Chocolate at The Pen offers a sensual evening in a posh, relaxed atmosphere and live, soft romantic music. Sure you may think I’ll bring the kids but few do – they just get a room!
