Chocolate Boutique Palet D'Or

Walk into the restaurant and you will be directed to a seat of your choice alongside with a menu. You could of course look through the menu (in Japanese), but the choice is obvious. Order the Petite Four and Drink Set. When asked about the drink, specify that you would like to top up an additional ¥200 for the Chocolat n’est-ce Pas?!, and choose ‘natural’ for your choice of sorbet. This is crucial, this drink is essentially the entire reason why you came to this place, but we will get to that in a minute.

Chances are, you drink will be served first, but for the sake of suspense, let us delve into the confectionary you will be getting in your Petite Four and Drink set.

On the plate should be three intricately put together dessert. The first, a coffee chocolate cake top with a glistening chocolate ganache. The second, a small dollop of berry sorbet severed on a mini-macaroon. Last but not least, a piece of dark chocolate dotted with gold flakes.

The chocolate cake is rich without being sickening, courtesy of the coffee; the texture of the cake is moist but with enough body that you do not feel as if there is barely anything to bite into. The ganache, without saying, is tempered beautifully and glistens a dark mahogany color.

Before long, the cake is finished and you prepare yourself for your next chocolate fare. This is where the sorbet comes in, as a palate cleaner between desserts.

Now you are ready for the artisan bittersweet chocolate, proudly named Palet D’or Noir. Bite into the shell of the chocolate and you will find yourself sinking into a soft chocolate ganache centre. Despite being made with dark chocolate, it does not have that sharp sour note most dark chocolates are known for. The taste is rich and mellow, perhaps a tad nutty, the sweetness is tempered by the tastefully bitter note of the cocoa. One thing you will notice about the chocolate is that it is incredibly smooth and the rich flagrance of the chocolate lingers in your mouth even after you have swallowed it.

That is until you wash it down with the 'Chocolat n’est-ce Pas?!'

When the drink is served to you, you will probably wonder, why I have asked you to order a soda float. That is because it is not just a mere soda float. Take a whiff, and you will find that the drink smells just like any other sparkling water. Now take a sip, and be amazed.

At the first sip, you can feel the filling you with the effervescent sweetness of chocolate, a taste and texture combination you previously thought was impossible and leaving a fizzy aftertaste as you swallow. A few more sips, just to reassure yourself, you realize that this really is just chocolate in soda form, and not the chocolate soda you have come to know, where hershy’s chocolate syrup was forcefully combined with sparkling water.

Then you dig into that white ‘natural’ flavored dollop of sorbet. If you did not know what coco butter is and how it tastes, you now do. Although the sorbet looks like frozen coconut milk, it has the buttery flavor of coco that you are so familiar with. Squinting at the sorbet, you realize you can see tiny specs of brown, most likely the coco that went into making this.

Before you know it, you have just finished one of the most tantalizing chocolate experience of your life, for just ¥1296.