Divine Artisan Chocolates!, San Francisco, California (D)

Master chocolatier Michael Recchuitti and wife Jacky founded Recchuiti Confections in 1997. Using the finest ingredients, Recchuiti confections are the most exquisite chocolates you will taste and see! BCT: Burnt Caramel Truffles, C3: Caramel to the Third Power, the Burgandy Box with three layer ganache and pates de fruits, the Black Box with the original 16 Recchuitti chocolates, the Green Box with an assortment of fresh herb and tea infused chocolates, including lavender. There are chocs here to sample for a lifetime! The flagship store is located at the San Francisco Ferry Building. Visit the San Francisco historic Dogpatch for the Recchuitti ChocolateLab café, and the smaller store next to it, called LittleNib.

ChocolateLab is the Recchuiti Confections café serving everything sweet made with chocolate and caramel. The ChocolateLab café offers pastries, cookies, fruits breads & cakes, ice-creams, pies & tarts, hot and cold chocolate drinks, a selection of on-the-go tartines for lunch, prix-fixe diners and Sunday brunch. It is located right next to the smaller Recchuiti Confections store called LittleNib, in the San Francisco Potrero Hill district, also called the Dogpatch. Check out the web site for the menus and prices.

LittleNib is a smaller Recchuiti Confections store than the Ferry building flagship store. At LittleNib you will find all the Recchuiti line of chocolates. It is located in the Potrero district of San Francisco, also called the Dogpatch. The Dogpatch was designated a historic district in 2002.

The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was founded in the middle of the gold rush, in 1852 by Domingo Ghirardelli. Pronounced “gear- ar- delly”, the company is still making chocolate from bean pod-to-bar, almost right in front of your eyes! At the original manufactory, at Ghirardelli Square, you can order a gigantic sundae -- right next to the large, and functioning, historic vats for pressing, mixing and conching of the chocolate beans. The sundaes are gigantic and exponentially delicious! Try the Earthquake Sundae, a family favorite with 8 scoops of ice-cream, eight toppings, fresh bananas, whipping cream, chopped almonds, chocolate chips and cherries! Ghiradelli also produces chocolate squares in a variety of flavors (Dark & Caramel, Dark 60% cocoa, Cookies & Crème, Double Fudge, Gourmet Milk, Gourmet Milk Sea Salt, Hazelnut Crisp, Dark & Mint, Dark & Sea Salt Caramel, Milk & Truffle, Dark & Truffle, Dark & Raspberry, Toffee Crunch, Sublime White, Intense Dark Sea Salt, Intense Dark Midnight, Cabernet Matinee, Intense Dark Twillight), Cocoa beverages (Mocha Frappé, Frozen Hot Cocoa, White Mocca Frappé; Double Hot Chocolate, Chocolate Mocca Hot, Premium White Mocca, Double Chocolate Frappé, Peppermint Cocoa, Double Chocolate Coffee etc..), baking chocolates, cookie and assorted brownee mixes, syrups and fudges!

TCHO is a chocolate maker, overseeing the whole chocolate making process, from purchasing bean pods to finished product. At the TCHO Beta Testing Factory on Pier 17 at the Embarcadero, you can sample TCHO chocs and purchase. You can also take a tour of the factory, with reservation, and up to 29 people for $100. TCHO is the phonetic spelling of the first syllable of the word “chocolate”.. It means: Obsessively good chocolate.. The “T” is silent, so that these chocs are pronounced “cho”... TCHO produces bars (Pure Notes Dark “Choclatey” at 70% cocoa, “Fruity” at 68% cocoa, “Nutty” at 65 % cocoa and “Bright” at 67% cocoa, Intense Dark at 99% cocoa, Mocacciono Serious Milk, Serious Milk at 39% and 59% cocoa), Drinking Chocolate canisters (Pepper2Mint, Hot & Cold, Superberry), all sorts of treats (Tcho covered cashews, nibs, mango and citrus nibs) and boxes of assorted artisan confections, plus baking chocolate.

Founded in 1997, in San Francisco, Scharffen Berger was America’s first artisan bean-to-bar chocolate maker since the Gold Rush, ushering in the Artisan Chocolate Rennaissance of San Francisco and the Bay Area. Scharffen Berger was also the first company to label the % of cocoa included in the chocolate. Scharffen Berger sources cocoa in an environmentally friendly and sustainable manner in West Africa, Latin America, Oceania (Papua New Guinea) and South East Asia, (Vietnam). Scharffen Berger makes confectionery, professional and baking chocolate. The Scharffen Berger confectionery chocolate bars include: Milk Chocolate with Sea-salted almonds with 41% cocoa, Milk chocolate with 41% cocoa, Milk Chocolate Nibby Bar with 41% cocoa, Mocha Chocolate Bar with 62% cocoa, Semisweet Bar with 62% cocoa, Dark Chocolate Nibby Bar with 62% cocoa, Bittersweet with 72% cocoa, Extra-dark with 82% cocoa. The company was acquired by Hershey’s in 2005, but still sells under its own brand name. The original Scharffen Berger Factory, located in Berkeley, was closed in 2009. The full line of Scharffen Berger Chocolates is found at the Village Market at the San Francisco Ferry Building. The Berhringer Winery in Napa Valley also offers a wine and Scharffen Berger chocolate pairing tour.

Handmade truffles with a French twist by Chef Jean-Marc Gorce and his wife Casimira. There are 27 unforgettable flavors, including liqueurs-based (Amaretto, Cognac, à la Kahlua, Honey Vodka, Rum Raison, Sebastien’s Champagne, Spicy Cayenne Tequila, Tripple Sec, Vin Rouge) and non-liqueured (Caramel, Casimira’s Favorite – White chocolate, Coconut, French Roast, Lemon Ginger, Orange, Bergamot, Earl Grey and Framboise), plus three Soy/Vegan truffles (Dark chocolate, à l’Orange, and Noisette). XOX Truffles are rated among the top 10 chocolates in the US by Chocolatier Magazine! They are located in the North Beach district of San Francisco.

Master chocolatier Kathy Wiley has created Poco Dolce exquisite dark chocolate and salt tiles in the San Francisco historic DogPatch area, since 2003. The divine tiles, just under 2 square inches and individually wrapped, come with different inclusions such as almonds and coconut, ginger, burnt caramel toffee, mint toffee, toasted sesame seeds, pistachios, hazelnuts or macadamia nuts, and each tile is topped with a few grains of salt, for a tantalizing sweet and salty taste. The name “Poco Dolce” in fact means “little sweet” that is “not too sweet” in Italian! Poco Dolce also makes its own flavors of drinking chocolate sold in beautifully designed canisters: dark hazelnut, mint or bittersweet, and a variety of chcolate bars. You can visit the production kitchen headquarters in the San Francisco DogPatch district, every day of the week, and also purchase Poco Dolce chocolates there.

Boxed chocolates and edible chocolate boxes, that’s a new take on having your cake and eating it too! Make a reservation for a tour, or go for a fixed price high tea (or hot chocolate) at the Charles Chocolates Exhibition Kitchen and Chocolate Café in the Mission district and enjoy an assortment of pastries (chocolate scones, blueberry ricotta custard cake), a selection of tea sandwiches (meat confit, organic egg salad), a decadent variety of desserts (mini chocolate tarts), macarons, tea-infused truffles, and a 10-piece take-home box of Charles Chocolates! Charles chocolates are made fresh in San Francisco, and they were voted “Best in West” by Sunset Magazine!

Christopher Elbow’s colorful and elegant chocolates include such mouth-watering bonbons as Bananas Foster (bananas and brown sugar flambéed with rhum), Almond Kirsch (almond marzipan with kirsch infused ganache), Mango Basil (pate de fruit with fresh basil dark chocolate), Lavender Caramel (caramel infused with French lavender) and Ghana (dark chocolate ganache with 64% cocoa from Ghana). Add to these delightful chocolates, Christopher Elbow Turtles (perfectly roasted pecans and soft buttery caramel in a custom 63 % chocolate blend, topped with French grey seal salt) and you have a deliciously re-imagined classic!

Founded in 2004, CocoaBella represents the world, offering 20 brands from the best artisan chocolates of the Americas and Europe. This means that only those chocolate brands handcrafted in small batches by family-owned entrepreneurs are selected. Thus, CocoaBella founder Michael Freeman and his team are truly: “Curators of the World’s finest chocolates”! This world selection of artisan chocolates is then presented in CocoaBella boxes in magnificent assortments, or you can select your favorites and customize your boxes. At the website you can meet all of the master chocolatiers from around the world.

Chocolated Covered is a chocolate boutique that promises “Adventures in chocolate and whimsical gifts”. Located in the San Francisco Noe Valley district, one half of the store is dedicated to chocolate, the other is dedicated to tins and boxes, with San Francisco landmarks and street names, customizable with any image. Owner John Epstein curates the biggest selection of chocolates in the city. Among the best sellers: Chimayo (red chile) Pistachio semisweet chocolate (40 lbs sold each month..!), Madre Chocolate (a bean-to-bar Hawaiian company that makes chocolate with coconut milk and thus produces vegan, organic, fair trade and soy-free chocolate bars), and Al Nassma Camel Milk Chocolate (yes, camel-milk from the Middle East…).

The Zurich-based chocolatier Teuscher with more than 100 varieties of chocolate confections has a small shop in the San Francisco financial district. Teuscher in San Francisco offers famed Champagne truffles, a variety of other types of truffles, pralines, party and event favors as well as solid chocolate, and whimsical boxes. These are very delicious and expensive chocolates!

No city in the world without a Godiva boutique would be quite complete! World-famous, and much loved, Godiva chocolates were first manufactured in 1926, in Brussels (Belgium), by the chocolatier Joseph Draps. Godiva chocolates immediately became one of Belgium's flagship products. Expansion to locations around the globe began in 1958, and continues to date, with shops everywhere in Europe, Asia, the Persian Gulf, Middle East and Latin America. The name “Godiva” was inspired by the legend of Lady Godiva. Lady Godiva is purported to have ridden naked through the streets of Medieval Coventry, in England, in protest against her husband’s heavy tax burden on the townspeople. In return for her bravery and activism, the citizens of Coventry agreed to close their shutters and their eyes… To date, the Godiva chocolate company supports women of courage with a Lady Godiva philanthropy program. At the Godiva boutiques in San Francisco, you will find all the divine signature Godiva truffles, available is small and large gold boxes, and the full line of all the other Godiva confections, chocolate beverages, and dark chocolate-dipped strawberries.