Four Stops on the Hot Chocolate Train

Wow. So, drinking hot chocolate nonstop all day might sound like heaven, but apparently, despite my best efforts, I cannot live on a diet of only chocolate.

 Today was the main day of the insanity known as our Hot Cocoa Crawl. We had five stops planned. Yeah, five. We don’t have a death wish though, so we were limiting ourselves to one shared cup per location.

Our first stop of the day was Caffe Umbria. The “E” should have an accent over it because they’re fancy. When we told them that we were doing a hot chocolate experience, they asked if we were following the list from the Tribune. Yes, yes we were. We ordered their hot chocolate and because my mom has super persuasion powers, they gave us a sample of their cioccolata calda. I don’t really know how to pronounce it because I only ever heard my mom say it and she had no idea how to pronounce it. Our first glass of the day did not disappoint! It was our favorite stop at this point of the tour and the cioccolata calda was basically a drinkable chocolate ganache. Susan was a big fan of that one.

Since one hot chocolate clearly isn’t filling enough, our next stop XOCO was two blocks away. Who needs time to digest when you can have chocolate? XOCO is a Mexican restaurant and they’re specialty is Mexican hot chocolate (for obvious reasons). Mexican hot chocolate is a little different because it’s typically ground cocoa beans and water. As great as that sounds, we decided to order “the Classic” which was ground cocoa and 2% milk. We got it to go because the lunch rush was happening and we couldn’t get a table (our only to go cup of this experience). I really liked this stop. It was thicker and had a really rich, slightly bitter, chocolate taste. We agreed that this was the place to go if you wanted Mexican hot chocolate (although we technically didn’t get the Mexican hot chocolate).

Have I mentioned that all of our stops were within a 20 minute walking radius of each other today? Ok, now I have. Having already had two hot chocolates in two blocks, we decided we needed to do some digesting and I lead Whitney and my mom down to Navy Pier. Whitney bought some Garrett’s Popcorn there because it’s a Chi-town classic but she hasn’t sampled it yet. Whitney and my mom also got gyros for lunch but my belly was too full for any more food.

We got on the trolley (not the bus – there is a free trolley to take people to and from Navy Pier, although the bus goes there as well) to get back to the Magnificent “Mag” Mile. Our next stop was supposed to be Vosges Haut Chocolat but surprise, surprise, when we went there, this store only sold chocolate and not actual hot chocolate. That’s false advertising if you ask me (and you did, obviously).

We walked down the Mag Mile from there and found our next stop, Pierrot Gourmet at the Peninsula. Yup, the name is that long. This was our most expensive cup of the tour so far ($7) and easily the most disappointing. We decided to order two cups here, their signature hot chocolate and their orange hot chocolate. Whitney and I weren’t too interested in getting the orange hot chocolate but our mom wanted to compare it to Bittersweet. Well, despite being our ritziest stop, this was a flop. The orange was TOO orange – was there even chocolate in there? Was there even chocolate in the signature chocolate? The only part that we liked was that the signature was topped with whipped cream and chocolate jimmies, but when sprinkles are the highlight of your $7 beverage, you have a problem. I summed it up by saying: too much money, not enough chocolate.

Our last stop of the day was less than a block away, so we ended up taking advantage of all of the shopping on the Mag Mile and stopped at Uniqlo and then went across the street to American Girl Place. Our last family trip to Chicago was 16 years ago and centered around American Girl Place (for us, at least, I’m pretty sure it was business related for my dad). They’ve discontinued the Molly McIntire doll because they clearly hate me, but it was fun to go back (although technically, to go back, we’d have had to go to an Anthropologie because they’ve changed locations since we first visited, but same concept!).

From there, we went to our last stop of the day, Leonidas Chocolate Café. I had been there before but that wasn’t going to stop me from getting through one more cup – a triple chocolate hot chocolate. Their small was liberally poured and the same size as some of the large cups we’ve had elsewhere.

We’d had a lot of chocolate and I had not had a lot to eat so I got a sandwich from Potbelly because vegetables exist and I should probably eat more of them. My mom and Whitney had thought that they would go shopping when I was at work but decided that they were tired and would head home when I had to go to the theatre (plus, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Whitney is actually Santa and she had to go back to the workshop). The vegetables helped my stomach and throughout the show I got text message updates from my family about everything they were doing at my apartment – wrapping gifts, fixing my drawers, ordering books for Whitney. They had a big night!

The Hot Cocoa Crawl will wrap up tomorrow at Mindy’s Hot Chocolate (we may or may not have saved the best for last, only time will tell!) and then they’ll be seeing Chicago’s holiday classic EXTENDED BY POPULAR DEMAND Tony N Tina’s Wedding. (P.S. Totally wrote this post during tonight’s show – we only had 50 people in the audience! What else was I supposed to do with my new working laptop and a small crowd?).