Arsicault

THE. BEST. CROSSIANTS.

How does a bakery, only open for a year, get named as Bon Apetit's best bakery of the year? By having the freshest, flakiest, butter-iest, most delicious croissants you will ever consume.

As I may have mentioned previously, I spent my last semester in London. One of my closest friends was studying in Paris and before visiting,  I looked up lists on lists on lists of the best croissants in Paris, cross-checked, and proceeded to try MANY.  This is a bold statement, but Arsicault tops all of them. Valhrona chocolate almond croissants...i'm just gonna leave that there.

We waited in line for an hour in the brisk San Francisco fog. PSA - we arrived at 8:30, but I would recommend arriving at 7 or 7:30 before it opens. It was totally worth it and I have every intention of doing it all over again. Actually I plan to do exactly that when my roommates visit from Boston. Pro-tip: have one person go to Fifty/Fifty coffee shop and get some banging coffee/hazlenut hot chocolate/fruit tea while the others stay in line. And if you're feeling super adventurous, jump in an uber pool and head over to Dolores Park. I promise they'll still be warm when you get there, but I can't promise that you won't finish them on the way there.

So, I think you all know what you need to do. Run, don't walk. You'll thank me later.

-xoxo-
Kate

(sorry for the lack of pics.. everything was deleted off my phone 😢)

Timothy Adams Chocolate

It all started at 9am on a Friday morning. It was the weekly co-op meeting…this is how all good stories start, right?

But actually, one of the co-ops in our office, Anas, went on a team building excursion to Timothy Adams Chocolatier with the accounting team. As we were all catching up, he mentioned the experience and it immediately went on my bucket list. Luckily for me, I wasn’t the only one who felt this way and we decided to go to celebrate Krista’s 22^nd birthday (whoooo – happy birthday Krista!!!)

So, let me start by saying, THERE ARE TOO MANY CHOCOLATE GIFs.

But that’s ok because who needs words when you have gifs?

So here’s my story:

                                         

If you didn’t capture the general gist of my experience, I’ll provide a little summary. We started by testing all kinds of chocolate starting at 99% and working our way to white chocolate. We probably sampled 10 different chocolates. This was just the beginning. I repeat, 10 chocolates were just the beginning. We moved on to making the ganache. The whole point of creating the ganache was to make truffles. We tore up homemade marshmallows, crushed pecans, and started rolling them in with the chocolate for some Rocky Road truffles. On the other side of the table, they were working on coconut caramel truffles and chocolate on chocolate. Of course, we ate as we went, tried all kinds of specialty coffees (53% TCHO sipping chocolate with hazelnut milk and espresso…omg), and finally had 3 trays full of completed truffles. I’ll be honest, they didn’t look as good as the ones in the case, but they were certainly delicious. I “tried” each one multiple times, because let’s be honest, you’re never really “trying” something when you already had 3. At that point, you (being me) just really desperately want/need?!? it. Sugar is an addiction, folks. Sometimes it gets classified as a need. Anyway, we all ate way too much sugar, had horrible stomach aches, went home with a bag of our creations and an adorable box of the beautiful cased chocolates, and had a fabulous time. I said on multiple occasions that I would be taking at least a week long break from chocolate, but I made the mistake of leaving my chocolates at my office desk. That resolution lasted about 14 hours. Good job me. But, you know, it’s salad right?! 

If you're overwhelmed by these gifs, then you are feeling what I was feeling. Congratulations, you gained all the pain and none of the delicious chocolate upside. I highly recommend buying a chocolate bar right now. You'll thank me later.

-xoxo-
Kate