8.26.2010

Coffee and Chocolates

You know what makes for a good Wednesday evening?  Let me show you:


I'm usually one for games and I could play the "guess where I was" game but I'll go easy on you today and just tell you the answer: I was at the Starbucks on Newbury Street to start, learning all about a new reserve flavor of coffee that  is headed your way (for a limited time, at least) and then I was the Langham Hotel to celebrate the start of their new chocolate bar brunch menu that will be launching this fall.  It has been an eventful week, hasn't it??

To start, Starbucks is celebrating its brand new reserve coffee flavor, Galapagos.  My, doesn't that sound fancy, and it was quite delicious too.  Being a coffee drinker myself, I was pretty excited to go this event.  The coffee itself is grown on Bourbon trees and this can actually only happen when the climate's just right.  The coffee itself was quite good and we were instructed to taste it just as you would taste wine; smell it, get a little on your palate, and then drink it slowly, picking apart the flavors.  To me, at first it was sort of strong, with a nice little punch to let you know it's there, and then it mellows out and becomes smooth and herbally and sort of chocolaty.  It's a very unique flavor.  It was paired with cinnamon scones to help bring out the chocolate notes.


After I learned all about coffee, it was off to The Langham Hotel's Chocolate Bar.  The bar itself is over 20 years old and each year there is a different theme to the menu and this year, it's all about the 5 tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, spicy).  So that means that each menu item on the brunch is full of of these plays on the senses.  For example, I had a bacon-banana tart that was a good balance of sweet and salty (being a little greedy, I would have liked more bacon!) there was also a passion fruit parfait that was amazing.  It was sort of sour with a sweet finish.  There were also brunch items there that were created to toy with your tastes as well.  I liked the sliced and grilled red pear that was wrapped in prosciutto and the baby heirloom tomato and mozzarella salad was so delicious I don't want to tell you how many platefuls I had of it.


What a night and quite a great way to get prepared for all of the fun (and eating) that is going to happen this weekend!  Watch out Seattle, I'm coming!

5 comments:

Fun and Fearless in Beantown said...

What a fantastic night! I skipped out on these two events (even though it looks like they were fabulous) to take a night off with some food blogger pals for dinner at Upstairs on the Square. We had an interesting tomato sorbet dessert...but definitely didn't have the crazy selection like you did from the Langham!

Delicious Dishings said...

Oh my goodness all that chocolate! Looks fabulous!

Kristen said...

You described that coffee so incredibly well, I'm basically headed to SBUX tomorrow to pick up a cup. And that event at the Langham?! how cool. Love the focus and theme of this years menu!

Anonymous said...

What a fun event! Will have to check it out soon. Thanks for sharing!

Larissa said...

I love the chocolate bar at the Langham! Am embarrassed to tell how many times I've been :)

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