The Best Chocolate Cake in the World - March 20, 2011

Even in a city full of megalomanias and egoists with a united goal of self-promotion, no one has exactly come out and brazenly declared to be the absolute best, until now.

Bittersweet

The cake is constructed with layers of chocolate meringue and chocolate mousse, on top of which is a gooey layer of chocolate ganache. The conceptual play of two contrasting textural ingredients – light and crumbly meringue against the smooth mousse – is a good one; theoretically, the richness and the heaviness of the chocolate mousse should be lightened by the airiness of the meringue, which is, I assume, in order to preserve its cacao purity, fortified with cocoa powder but without nuts as would have been in a dacquoise.* However, the expected concentration of chocolate flavor was sadly and strangely missing; in its stead, my palate was coated with a dense sweetness. While the Portuguese national preference, or fervor, for sugar is duly noted, and it is not an ideology that I particularly abhor in essence because some things simply need to be saccharinely sweet – i.e. flan, marzipan, yokan (Japanese red bean paste jelly), I draw a line when the sugar obscures other ingredients. If my slice of “bittersweet” was so sweet, I wonder what the “traditional” would have been.

*Although some reviews and reports have proclaimed the cake to be such.

Lastly, there is also a chocolate mate tea on offer – an elixir of two powerful anti-oxidants; as far as medicine goes, this one does not taste too bad.

The Best Chocolate Cake in the World
Address:  55 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012
Phone:  (212) 343-2253