Divine Artisan Chocolates in San Francisco

Master chocolatier Michael Recchuitti and wife Jacky founded Recchuiti Confections in 1997. Using the finest ingredients, Recchuiti confections are the most exquisite chocolates you will taste and see! BCT: Burnt Caramel Truffles, C3: Caramel to the Third Power, the Burgandy Box with three layer ganache and pates de fruits, the Black Box with the original 16 Recchuitti chocolates, the Green Box with an assortment of fresh herb and tea infused chocolates, including lavender. There are chocs here to sample for a lifetime! The flagship store is located at the San Francisco Ferry Building. Visit the San Francisco historic Dogpatch for the Recchuitti ChocolateLab café, and the smaller store next to it, called LittleNib.

ChocolateLab is the Recchuiti Confections café serving everything sweet made with chocolate and caramel. The ChocolateLab café offers pastries, cookies, fruits breads & cakes, ice-creams, pies & tarts, hot and cold chocolate drinks, a selection of on-the-go tartines for lunch, prix-fixe diners and Sunday brunch. It is located right next to the smaller Recchuiti Confections store called LittleNib, in the San Francisco Potrero Hill district, also called the Dogpatch. Check out the web site for the menus and prices.

LittleNib is a smaller Recchuiti Confections store than the Ferry building flagship store. At LittleNib you will find all the Recchuiti line of chocolates. It is located in the Potrero district of San Francisco, also called the Dogpatch. The Dogpatch was designated a historic district in 2002.

The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was founded in the middle of the gold rush, in 1852 by Domingo Ghirardelli. Pronounced “gear- ar- delly”, the company is still making chocolate from bean pod-to-bar, almost right in front of your eyes! At the original manufactory, at Ghirardelli Square, you can order a gigantic sundae - right next to the large, and functioning, historic vats for pressing, mixing and conching of the chocolate beans. The sundaes are gigantic and exponentially delicious!

Try the Earthquake Sundae, a family favorite with 8 scoops of ice-cream, eight toppings, fresh bananas, whipping cream, chopped almonds, chocolate chips and cherries! Ghiradelli also produces chocolate squares in a variety of flavors (Dark & Caramel, Dark 60% cocoa, Cookies & Crème, Double Fudge, Gourmet Milk, Gourmet Milk Sea Salt, Hazelnut Crisp, Dark & Mint, Dark & Sea Salt Caramel, Milk & Truffle, Dark & Truffle, Dark & Raspberry, Toffee Crunch, Sublime White, Intense Dark Sea Salt, Intense Dark Midnight, Cabernet Matinee, Intense Dark Twillight), Cocoa beverages (Mocha Frappé, Frozen Hot Cocoa, White Mocca Frappé; Double Hot Chocolate, Chocolate Mocca Hot, Premium White Mocca, Double Chocolate Frappé, Peppermint Cocoa, Double Chocolate Coffee etc..), baking chocolates, cookie and assorted brownee mixes, syrups and fudges!

Handmade truffles with a French twist by Chef Jean-Marc Gorce and his wife Casimira. There are 27 unforgettable flavors, including liqueurs-based (Amaretto, Cognac, à la Kahlua, Honey Vodka, Rum Raison, Sebastien’s Champagne, Spicy Cayenne Tequila, Tripple Sec, Vin Rouge) and non-liqueured (Caramel, Casimira’s Favorite – White chocolate, Coconut, French Roast, Lemon Ginger, Orange, Bergamot, Earl Grey and Framboise), plus three Soy/Vegan truffles (Dark chocolate, à l’Orange, and Noisette). XOX Truffles are rated among the top 10 chocolates in the US by Chocolatier Magazine! They are located in the North Beach district of San Francisco.

Master chocolatier Kathy Wiley has created Poco Dolce exquisite dark chocolate and salt tiles in the San Francisco historic DogPatch area, since 2003. The divine tiles, just under 2 square inches and individually wrapped, come with different inclusions such as almonds and coconut, ginger, burnt caramel toffee, mint toffee, toasted sesame seeds, pistachios, hazelnuts or macadamia nuts, and each tile is topped with a few grains of salt, for a tantalizing sweet and salty taste. The name “Poco Dolce” in fact means “little sweet” that is “not too sweet” in Italian! Poco Dolce also makes its own flavors of drinking chocolate sold in beautifully designed canisters: dark hazelnut, mint or bittersweet, and a variety of chcolate bars. You can visit the production kitchen headquarters in the San Francisco DogPatch district, every day of the week, and also purchase Poco Dolce chocolates there.

Boxed chocolates and edible chocolate boxes, that’s a new take on having your cake and eating it too! Make a reservation for a tour, or go for a fixed price high tea (or hot chocolate) at the Charles Chocolates Exhibition Kitchen and Chocolate Café in the Mission district and enjoy an assortment of pastries (chocolate scones, blueberry ricotta custard cake), a selection of tea sandwiches (meat confit, organic egg salad), a decadent variety of desserts (mini chocolate tarts), macarons, tea-infused truffles, and a 10-piece take-home box of Charles Chocolates! Charles chocolates are made fresh in San Francisco, and they were voted “Best in West” by Sunset Magazine!

Christopher Elbow’s colorful and elegant chocolates include such mouth-watering bonbons as Bananas Foster (bananas and brown sugar flambéed with rhum), Almond Kirsch (almond marzipan with kirsch infused ganache), Mango Basil (pate de fruit with fresh basil dark chocolate), Lavender Caramel (caramel infused with French lavender) and Ghana (dark chocolate ganache with 64% cocoa from Ghana). Add to these delightful chocolates, Christopher Elbow Turtles (perfectly roasted pecans and soft buttery caramel in a custom 63 % chocolate blend, topped with French grey seal salt) and you have a deliciously re-imagined classic!

Chocolated Covered is a chocolate boutique that promises “Adventures in chocolate and whimsical gifts”. Located in the San Francisco Noe Valley district, one half of the store is dedicated to chocolate, the other is dedicated to tins and boxes, with San Francisco landmarks and street names, customizable with any image. Owner John Epstein curates the biggest selection of chocolates in the city. Among the best sellers: Chimayo (red chile) Pistachio semisweet chocolate (40 lbs sold each month..!), Madre Chocolate (a bean-to-bar Hawaiian company that makes chocolate with coconut milk and thus produces vegan, organic, fair trade and soy-free chocolate bars), and Al Nassma Camel Milk Chocolate (yes, camel-milk from the Middle East…).

Exotic chocolates (Kalamata Olive, Tamarind Mango) and artistic ones (Kama Sutra Tiles) made in North Berkeley, across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco in the East Bay. New flavors each week with lots of vegan options! The chocolate used for all the confections is locally sourced, as well as all the fine, organic ingredients. Signature products include chocolate bars made in-house and curated from all around the world, hot, dark and dairy-free sipping chocolate, and edible artistic chocolates (the Mayan calendar, Buddha figurines and Kama Sutra tiles). Malena Lopez-Maggi and Clive Brown are the artists-turned chocolatiers. They launched The Xocolate Bar in 2004, and won Best in Show at the 2005 San Francisco Chocolate Salon. The Xocolate Bar also offers beginning chocolate-making classes on Monday and Wednesday evenings (6-9 pm) at the Bar. According to Malena: “Anything beautiful is more beautiful made of chocolate!”

Alegio Chocolaté is a chocolate boutique curating some of the best artisan chocolates from around the world and offering a Chocolate Tasting Tour-for-two! Among the finest you will find Claudio Corallo chocolates, with cocoa sourced in Principe and confections produced in Sao Tomé, two tiny islands that make up the country of Sao Tomé and Principe, off the coast of West Africa. You will also find artistic Enric Rovira chocolates from Barcelona, Spain, a collection of Joan Coukus truffles with cocoa sourced in Madagascar, Australia and Venezuela, and much more that you can sample on your Chocolate Tasting tour for Two! Alegio Chocolaté is also located on the same block as Alice Waters' Chez Panisse, one of the most famous American restaurants.

Bean-to-bar chocolatier, coffee roaster, baker and yogurt maker, the Bittersweet Chocolate café does it all, in-house! There are even two Bittersweet cafés: the original one in the Rockridge district of the city of Oakland, and a new location in downtown Oakland, both just across from San Francisco, when you take the Bay Bridge or the under-the-Bay Muni system. Signature Bittersweet café items include: small batches of hand-rolled ganache truffles (Bittersweet, Fleur de sel, Spicy and Seasonal flavors), house-made Vanilla Marshmallows, and Dark Chocolate Barks (Almond with Sea Salt, Peppermint and Toffee seasonally). Add to the in-house chocolates, a Bittersweet Café label of chocolate bars and coffee beans sourced directly from the growers, a selection of coffee and chocolate drinks and in-house baked pastries and breads! FYI - The current coffee roasting highlight is the Bittersweet in-house “Obama Blend 2012”, a limited edition of Hawaiian, Kenyan and Indonesia coffee beans!

The Zurich-based chocolatier Teuscher with more than 100 varieties of chocolate confections has a small shop in the San Francisco financial district. Teuscher in San Francisco offers famed Champagne truffles, a variety of other types of truffles, pralines, party and event favors as well as solid chocolate, and whimsical boxes. These are very delicious and expensive chocolates!

No city in the world without a Godiva boutique would be quite complete! World-famous, and much loved, Godiva chocolates were first manufactured in 1926, in Brussels (Belgium), by the chocolatier Joseph Draps. Godiva chocolates immediately became one of Belgium's flagship products. Expansion to locations around the globe began in 1958, and continues to date, with shops everywhere in Europe, Asia, the Persian Gulf, Middle East and Latin America.

The name “Godiva” was inspired by the legend of Lady Godiva. Lady Godiva is purported to have ridden naked through the streets of Medieval Coventry, in England, in protest against her husband’s heavy tax burden on the townspeople. In return for her bravery and activism, the citizens of Coventry agreed to close their shutters and their eyes… To date, the Godiva chocolate company supports women of courage with a Lady Godiva philanthropy program. At the Godiva boutiques in San Francisco, you will find all the divine signature Godiva truffles, available is small and large gold boxes, and the full line of all the other Godiva confections, chocolate beverages, and dark chocolate-dipped strawberries.