Sydney chocolate crawl

Sydney people love their tea and their coffee. And they're also pretty particular about their chocolates, which you might not necessarily expect. So there are quite a few chocolateries and chocolate cafes in the city. A few months ago, I read a blog post by a girl who'd visited Sydney and gone on her very own chocolate crawl. She went to three or four well-known chocolate shops in the CBD and tried something that caught her eye at each one. I decided this was a fabulous idea, and something that Holly and I should do while she was here. So I did a little research, created a Google map of the places we wanted to visit, and we headed out on her last fully day in Sydney for our chocolate crawl!

View Sydney chocolate crawl in a larger map

There are chocolate shops all around Sydney, but we stuck to the ones in the CBD. (This let us sneak in some shopping while we walked off all our chocolates.) Our plan was to try two chocolates at each stop, and choose something that caught our eye or was the shop speciality.

Max Brenner

Max Brenner was our first stop. It's a chain chocolate cafe, and by far the most touristy place we visited. But it's a must-see place in terms of their menu and gift shop, so it was on our list.

Chocolates: 

Praline cream mixed with roasted coconut
Dark chocolate ganache with lemon peel oil

The lemon peel oil truffle was, as you might expect, a mistake and neither of us cared for it very much. But the other was lovely!

Adora

After a little souvenir and gift shopping, Adora was our next stop. It was started by two sisters, a fact that we found particularly endearing. One of the coolest things about Adora was that the shop had all kinds of cool chocolate sculptures - like giant shoes and giant chocolate baskets filled with more chocolate. That's my kind of basket! =)

Chocolates: 

Coffee
Wattleseed

Two thumbs up for both of these! I was surprised to like the wattleseed one, but it was actually very nice. 

Haighs

Next on the list was Haighs, probably the most well-known and most popular chocolate shop in Sydney. At Christmas time, the line at Haighs was out the door and down the street every day. There are several shops in Sydney, but we went to the one in the Strand shopping center, since it fit in with our shopping/eating agenda. It's a lovely, refined little shop, and the old wood signage in it makes you feel like you've stepped back in time.

Chocolates: 

Dark macademia nut honey nougat

Strawberry pepperberry ganache

The nougat in the macademia nut chocolate was too nougat-y for us; our jaws were tired afterward. But the strawberry pepperberry was fun: not too pepper-y, but not plain-Jane strawberry either.

BonBon

The BonBon chocolate shop was at the other end of the shopping center from Haigh's, so we did a bit of window shopping before stopping in there. But it was worth the wait: it turned out to be one of our favorite stops of the day! The shop itself is really pretty: there are giant chandeliers, and all the displays just make you want to fill up a basket with treats for people!

Chocolates: 

Picasso: Apricot-amaretto ganache dipped in milk & dark chocolate
Cornetto: Soft Gianduja swirl in golden foil

Both of these were amazing, but hands-down our favorite was the apricot-amaretto. It was easily in both of our top 3 of the day lists, and maybe #1 on both!

David Jones

Not really a chocolate shop, I added David Jones to our list because the confectionary section there is really fun to walk around. There's a huge selection of chocolate gifts, and it looks just like the department stores on movies look. Plus, they actually do sell chocolates made by chocolate-makers, so we sampled those.

Chocolates: 

Passion fruit
Creme brulee: Caramalized vanilla creme in white chocolate

We'd seen passion fruit chocolates at almost every stop and decided finally to try one here since it looked so pretty. Sadly, it tasted just like passion fruit, so it looked cuter than it tasted. The creme brulee was wonderful though.

Princess Coco

I knew of Princess Coco only by reputation from a few people, but they had raved about it, so I added it on our route. It turned out not to have very many chocolates but be more of a chocolate cafe. A princess-themed chocolate cafe. The chairs were purple velvet with gold frames, and some of them looked more like thrones than chairs. So even though we were breaking from our chocolates-only pattern, we grabbed a throne seat and indulged in a plate of petit fours.

All of these were really delicious, and so beautiful it was almost a shame to eat them!

Josephans

The final stop of the day was Josephans. This was a dangerous move because Josephans is right around the corner from my office, and it could be the start of a dangerous addiction!

Chocolates:

Honey & saffron
Cacao nibs with cinnamon and vanilla sugar

Both of these were really good, and nice and unique too.

We also bought Toby a peanut butter cup chocolate here, since he was at work that day. Someone had to pay for all our shopping and eating! ;-) And to round out the box, we chose a strawberry balsamic chocolate to have that evening. It turned out to be one of our favorites from the day - amazingly perfect.

Our day of chocolate-crawling around Sydney was a huge success and so much fun! I think we liked looking at all the chocolates and seeing all the unique flavors as much as actually trying them. OK, not quite that much, but it was a really fun, and super indulgent day all around!

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