L’inoui : Your Hot chocolate search ends here

Phoenix Marketcity is not very far from home and in the last couple of times I have visited it, I have been this cute little chocolate cafe which right outside Marks & Spencers on the ground floor, but for some strange reason I am always in a hurry, running to or for a place to sit down for a cup of hot chocolate. Many a times I thought that one day I will get my laptop and sit and work there with what else but a hot chocolate but somehow I never got around doing it and then last week I got an email from them asking if I would like to come over and try the hot chocolate and macrons while I chat with the owner Anusha and I was like this is the time to leave the child at home and have my hot chocolate in peace (yes I am a mean mother like that)

As soon as I reached, I got down to the business of tasting the hot chocolate. I ordered a Extra Dark one, 72% Belgium couverture. It comes as a chocolate cube with a stirring stick, a cup of hot milk and a cookie. You stir the chocolate in the milk and watch it melt and then drink the magical potion. This was one of the best hot chocolates I have had in bangalore. Rich and dark just as it should be. They also have milk, standard dark, orange dark and strawberry white. But for me the extra dark is the real deal.

While we were sipping on the fab hot chocolate, me and Anusha chatted on the problems on getting high quality ingredients in Bangalore and running a commercial kitchen which doesn’t use any of the preservative loaded stuff. Yes the chocolates you get at L’inoui are all Belgian and Swiss Couverture and apart from that too all the stuff they use in their desserts is also real stuff. They don’t use cake gel and the non-dairy cream. She was telling me stories on how it was so tough make the chef’s unlearn years of using those ingredients and I so understand what she means because that is one of my biggest challenge with the consulting gigs I do too. The non use of chemical stuff came out in the desserts I tasted that day. The coconut and white chocolate cake was spongy but not like a rosgulla like cake that you get in market these days, dripping in sugar syrup, a little sweet because of its very nature. The chocolate and orange cake on the other was dreamy, soaked in freshly squeezed orange juice every bite was delightful

There was also an adorable thing called Chocolate bomb, a vanilla and raspberry pastry encased in a chocolate sphere, it is presented with hot chocolate sauce which when poured over the chocolate bomb melts the casing revealing the surprise pastry inside. Simple yet clever, and the surprise when you eat take the first bite is bittersweet (pun intended) as after pouring the hot chocolate you are expecting something warm but then you get a cold pastry. Delightful actually

And what you can’t go to a chocolate cafe and come back without eating some chocolate can you? So I also tasted some of their truffles and barks. In the picture there was extra dark-orange (70%), dark – 52%(their best seller) and milk. Needless to say I liked the extra dark and orange the best, I am sucker for dark chocolate and I eat 85-90% dark and I love it, but the texture of the truffles was nice and rich. The barks were also good and showed the chocolate has been tempered well

The good folks at L’inoui sent me home with a pack of chocolates and macrons and the macrons were really good. The texture of the shell brilliant and the right amount of sweetness.

One would think I had my chocolate fill for a week but guess what I was back there next day with child in row to drink some more hot chocolate. Guys really if you are looking for a good hot chocolate and macrons, your search ends at L’inoui