Melbourne’s 10 best chocolate shops
MELBOURNE has a long, proud history of chocolate, with the first confectioner’s opening stores in the city in the 1840s.
Fast forward to today and there are many chocolate boutiques and cafes where chocolatiers serve their handmade treats and artisan delights.
Here are Melbourne’s 10 best shops to sate even the sweetest tooth — at any time of the year.
MORK CHOCOLATE
If you’ve ordered a hot chocolate in any of Melbourne’s best cafes over the past couple of years, there’s a good chance it was a Mork hot choc that had you swooning. Meaning “dark” in Swedish, Mork is the product of Josefin Zernell, a trained chocolatier, and her partner, Kiril Shaginov, and now melds the worlds of specialty chocolate and cafes in one place. The first Mork concept store and brew house has just opened in North Melbourne. Offering a side-by-side tasting of their four blends, from the junior blend made from 50 per cent cacao to the darkest 85 per cent single origin blend, you can also try the specialty drinks that have caused queues out the door — a campfire choc is a multi-sensory experience that comes complete with toasted marshmallow.
Easter Treat: The layered choc drink is a chilled hot choc made with crème catalana. Egg-tastic custard choc in a drink.
Mork Chocolate Brew House, 150 Errol St, North Melbourne.
CACAO LAB
Since the first store opened in St Kilda in 2003, Cacao chefs Tim Clark and Laurent Meric have expanded their offerings of handcrafted chocolates, pastries, cakes and macarons to include eclairs at their latest store, the futuristic-looking Cacao Lab. “We wanted to put a modern spin on eclairs,” Tim says. The fantastical creations — a Milo cremeaux, for instance, or a classic Tim Tam eclair, exquisitely decorated — do just that.
Easter Treat: The Cacao Easter offerings are just as fun, too, with “Free Range Eggs” that come in their own carton, through the Rockstar Bunny that’s studded with pop rocks.
Cacao Lab Driver Lane, city (also St Kilda, Doncaster, Highpoint)
KOKO BLACK
From humble beginnings 12 years ago when the first store opened, Melbourne’s Koko Black is now sharing the joys of artisan chocolate with the rest of Australia. Their hot chocolates are legendary, while the chocolate creations as artfully beautiful as they are delicious include handmade chocolates, single-origin chocolate bars, hampers and gift boxes.
Easter Treat: Handcrafted bunnies and speckled quails eggs are delicious.
Koko Black, various locations including Royal Arcade, city.
PANA CHOCOLATE
Pana Chocolate is another Melbourne success story that’s exporting its creations all over the world. Since opening his Richmond flagship store in August 2013, Pana Barbounis’s vegan-friendly raw chocolates have made many friends, with bars found in more than 2000 stores across Australia, the US and Europe. A new Sydney dessert cafe opened earlier this month, joining the Richmond store. Popular chocs include the “Pana Pop”, a Golden Gaytime-like white choc cheesecake, and the Vespa Wheel, their coconut marshmallow-filled take on a Wagon Wheel. Handmade, hand packaged and proudly local, Pana Chocolate aims to be as good for you as it is for the planet.
Easter treat: Bars include coconut and goji berry, sour cherry and vanilla, and raw cacao, perfect for an egg-less Easter gift.
Pana Chocolate, 491 Church St, Richmond.
MONSIEUR TRUFFE
Behind the little red door on Lygon St, chocolate lovers know they’ll find some of the best locally made chocolate made right there before their eyes. Famed for their bean-to-bar range, there’s also specialty bars — 38 per cent milk chocolate with honeycomb is an easy eat, the 72 per cent Ecuadorean dark one for the connoisseurs.
Easter treat: The Monsieur Truffe sardines are a delicate delight, while their Easter roosters rule
the roost.
Monsieur Truffe factory and store, 351 Lygon St, East Brunswick.
XOCOLATL
It’s the Aztec word for chocolate (pronounced sho-KO-la-tl), and for the past decade Christos Partsiogloui and family have been serving Belgium-style chocolate truffles filled with weirdly wonderful combinations — there’s basil champagne, for instance, and the best-selling balsamic strawberry — at their two chocolate cafes. “We’ve had people coming to us every week since we first opened our doors,” Christos says.
Easter treat: Christos’ fine-art training is evident in the range of artisan eggs each Easter, which are decorated in the style of famous artists including Mondrian, Miro and even Banksy.
Xocolatl 11 Strathalbyn St, Kew East.
CHOCAMAMA
Louise Hannell set up her little shop of sweet treats on Degraves St three months ago, and customers have been flocking for the local licorice, boiled lollies and handmade chocolates, sourced from around Melbourne. Truffles, Tasmanian fudge, colourful jellies and choc-coated nuts make this a one-stop sweet shop.
Easter treat: This is the place for milk choc bunnies, eggs and all the traditional faves. Freckled eggs? Yes!
Chocamama 6 Degraves St, Melbourne.
BURCH & PURCHESE
Darren Purchese is our very own choc magician, now running his fantastical sweet studio along with wife Cath Claringbold. The B & P chocpops are a perennial fave — dark choc and fruity freckles, white choc and salted caramel, super cute blue-nose bears — while the chocolate bars do creamy and dreamy in equal measure with flavours including puffed quinoa and spiced almond.
Easter treat: The B & P salted caramel eggs redefine the genre, while the sneaky choc chicks in their eggs redefine the question: what to eat
first, the chicken or the egg?
Burch & Purchese, 647 Chapel St, South Yarra.
HAHNDORF’S FINE CHOCOLATES
Plum pudding, coconut rough, Devonshire cream and chilli choc are just four of the 40-odd varieties of truffles you’ll find at Hahndorf stores around the suburbs. “We’re a chocolate shop with coffee on the side,” MD Paul Bradbury says. Some stores have taste-testing pumps, where you can try the truffle fillings. You can also make a hot choc out of the truffle fillings — Tia Maria or a plum pud hot choc sounds pretty delightful indeed.
Easter treat: Big bunnies and eggs decorated with rocky road or freckles are eagerly awaited by regulars each Easter.
Hahndorf’s, various locations including North Balwyn, Croydon South, Black Rock and Montrose.
CIOCCOLATO LOMBARDO
If one of the world’s best restaurants puts your chocolate on its menu, you must be doing something right. Tad Lombardo left behind a long engineering career to pursue a future in chocolate and quickly impressed Attica chef Ben Shewry. What started as a small-scale operation at Prahran Market graduated into its laboratory-like working shop space at the end of 2013.
Easter treat: Don’t miss the artisan metallic-painted eggs with salted caramel truffles hidden inside.
Cioccolato Lombardo, Prahran Market, 163 Commercial Rd, South Yarra.
CHOC CHEAT SHEET
Single origin chocolate made from cocoa from a single country or region, its flavours influenced by terroir.
Single estate chocolate made from cocoa grown on a one estate, flavours changing from harvest to harvest.
Coverture is the basic chocolate product that a chocolatier transforms into products such as bars
and truffles.
Ganache is a mixture of chocolate and cream used for filling truffles.
Cocoa content is the amount of cocoa in the finished chocolate. The higher the cocoa content, the less sugar is used and the more dominant the cocoa flavour.