The New York Times has just exposed one of our favourite chocolate/coffee secrets… the hole-in-the-wall Claudio Corallo shop in Lisbon. We’ve tried and tested their chocolates and find them to be excellent!
For those not in the know, it’s surprisingly easy to walk past some of the world’s best chocolate & coffee in the backstreets of Lisbon…
Specifically, we love the chocolate-coated coffee beans which come from Corallo’s own plantation of Nova Moca on the island of Sao Tome. (The cocoa beans come from their Terreiro Velho plantation on the island of Principe.) Corallo has taken three antique varieties of coffee bean and covered each in the same chocolate (55%cocoa), and depending on the coffee bean, either the coffee is dominant in the initial taste with the chocolate coming through later, or the chocolate predominates with the delicate coffee lingering through in the later stages, or, as in the third sample of coffee bean (there is a distinct order to this tasting!) both the flavour of the coffee and the chocolate burst through onto the palate in a delightful fusion. It is quite extraordinary.
A choco-cafe-overdose on a recent visit – cocoa beans, Corallo’s signature cocoa nibs, 100% cocoa sorbet and a Nova Moca Sao Tome espresso…
Thankfully we managed to organise a bag of Sao Tome beans from the shop in Lisbon just before the NYT got on the loudhailer. They will be making their way to doubleshot shortly and we can’t wait to experiment with their unique taste on our Kees idrocompresso machine!
1 response so far ↓
Andrej // November 10, 2009 at 6:37 pm |
I had the opportunity to try the three different combinations of chocolate and coffee beans when my brother came back from Sao Tome with a box. It was truly a wonderful experience to taste.