Frozen Yogurt from BoYo
Boston, it appears, really likes chocolate. The fact that the Boston Chocolate walking tour is one of two possible routes around chocolate shops and dessert-specialist restaurants in the city tells its own tale. Here we have a city with a serious sweet-tooth and whilst you can try and fight it, you’re going to have far more fun filling your face with the best treats in town.
Frozen Yogurts
We meet in a rather unpromising spot on Cambridge Street, where the traffic roars past and the shopping looks none-too-appealing. But, tucked around by a car park is Boyo – which, as we’re about to discover, is short for Boston Yogurt. Boyo is pioneering frozen yogurt in Boston, partly as a healthier alternative to ice cream and partly as a tasty treat in its own right.
Inside, we learn the difference between gelato, sorbet and ice-cream and the different processes that go into making frozen yogurt – think more chemistry set than milk churn. But the key thing, of course, is what it tastes like. We’re handed a sample of chocolate fudge frozen yogurt with raspberry – other flavours available include peanut butter, tiramisu and pina colada. It’s good and surprisingly light but perhaps lacks that sinful naughtiness that comes with a proper ice cream or gelato. After all, you don’t eat this sort of thing to be healthy, do you?
Charles Street in Beacon Hill
On the walk to our next stop, we start to learn a bit about the history of chocolate. The Mayans used cocoa beans to pay taxes with, while the good stuff was used for ‘medicinal purposes’ when the Europeans first discovered it. And that’s an excuse worth storing up for next time you’re accused of pigging out…
We turn onto Charles Street, which is the main shopping and eating strip in Beacon Hill. It has something of an old-fashioned, warmly upmarket charm about it, and is the sort of street you instantly want to make into a regular hang out. Next up is Savenor’s Market, long since a source of ingredients for Boston’s rich and famous. It sells some rather odd meats – llama, python and rattlesnake anyone? – but also some hard-to-get chocolates from around the world. We’re given some German biscuits, which taste fantastic – although the specialist bars from Madagascar look mighty tempting too.
Beacon Hill Chocolates
A few doors up is arguably the best stop of the lot for the ardent chocolate junkie. Beacon Hill Chocolates sources specialist chocs both domestically and internationally, but the magic is in the presentations. The store offers personalized wrapping, packaging and gift boxes – and every single thing on display looks ideal as a gift.
Inside, we learn how chocolate is made, flavors are blended and the differences between the best American chocolatiers and those internationally. Essentially, there are few sacred cows in the US – experiments with the likes of chili, salt and peanut butter aren’t seen as being beyond the pale. We learn about ganache (the soft fillings made from a mix of cream and chocolate), truffles (hand-rolled ganache) and bonbons (chocs made from filled molds and rounded off at the top), before tucking into a few samples.
The milk chocolate ganache is fabulous, as is 70% cocoa bar with citrus-y undertones. I ask why it has that taste, and am told it’s due to it being from a single source. Chocolate growing areas have their own characteristics in the same way that wine regions and individual vineyards have, it seems.
Twig and 75 Chestnut
Next up is Twig, which I want to describe as a florist. But it’s really rather more than that; the most high-concept florist I’ve ever entered. At Twig, a few bunches in buckets aren’t good enough, and everything in the shop – the vases, candles, homewares – seems coordinated for a vivid visual effect. The store also sells supercute boxes of chocolates (have you spotted the theme by now?) in which individual chocolate has a unique scene painted upon it.
From here on, the Beacon Hill chocolate tour starts separating the men from the boys. The challenges become bigger at every stop. At 75 Chestnut, a homely restaurant just off Charles Street, we get to try chocolate soup – usually part of a larger gluttonous dessert trio. It’s really good, as is the chocolate raspberry cake at Finale. This is a ‘desserterie’, specialising in all manner of temptation; it’s the sort of place you’d leave a meal in another restaurant for early, coming here to finish off. It’s a fabulously naughty place, but after demolishing the cake, I’m pretty much done for.
Chocolate fondue
Yet there is still more chocolate to go. The Melting Pot restaurant is part of a chain, but for the truly hardcore, this offers the most sinful experience of the lot. Our group is presented with four warm bowls of melted chocolate – each a different flavour – and a variety of goodies (from slices of banana to marshmallows) to dip into them. The banana goes beautifully with the dark chocolate cookies and cream, but I’m a broken man by this point. Savoury; my kingdom for something savoury.
Further indulgence
The Boston Chocolate Walking Tour just scratches the surface of the shameless indulgence you can explore in Boston, however. If, by some remarkable feat of human biology, you’ve not had your fill of chocolate by the end, then there’s always Café Fleuri at the Langham Hotel. The Saturday afternoon all-you-can-eat buffet has one common ingredient to everything on offer – no prizes for guessing what that is…
And what better to wash it down with than lots of lovely beer? Both the Harpoon Brewery and more famous Sam Adams Brewery offer tours with tastings for those who are determined to destroy the last vestiges of a diet. Ah well, vegetables are so boring anyway, aren’t they?
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