David Bacco – Best Chocolatier in San Diego
Happy Thanksgiving all! I hope you had a fabulous holiday weekend sharing lots of delicious food with family and friends.
So, last Tuesday night was a special experience for me and my wife. We were invited to a special tasting of David Bacco’s famous gourmet chocolates. (Thanks Brook and David.)
Award winning Chocolatier, David Bacco, is making a big splash into San Diego’s chocolate scene! You may already be familiar with Chuao, Chi, or the Elegant Truffle in San Diego. Look out friends. David Bacco is bringing something completely new and fresh that will fill a void for all San Diegan Chocophiles.
When we arrived at David’s workshop, he gave us a VIP tour of his work area. He had already prepared some chocolate ganache, and then demonstrated how he cuts his ganache into perfect shapes (squares in this case) with his chocolate guitar (kind of like a cheese or egg slicer).
His next step was to feed the individual pieces of ganache onto an enrober. This is essentially an automated conveyor belt, which brings each piece of ganache under two curtains of creamy milk chocolate. A little air from a fan smoothes out the chocolate layer. Fantastic!
As the finished pieces near the end, the belt vibrates to shake off any excess milk chocolate before distributing them onto wax paper.
Finally, David added some cinnamon to taste.
As you can imagine, David can make a large variety of different ganaches and chocolate layers (milk chocolate, dark chocolate, etc.) for infinite possibilities. But, as a true craftsman and artist, he focuses on special combinations unique only to him alone. He has already won several awards including “Exclusive Chocolatier” and has taken first place in multiple categories in the Capitol Confectioner Awards.
Upon conclusion of our tour, David escorted us back to a room where he had prepared a special tasting. As you can see, the visual display was stunning. But would the taste match up to its visual appeal?? YES!!!
Similar to other traditional tastings, we started from the left and worked our way to the right. (Think of a flight of wines, or a beer tasting being from light to dark.) Chocolate requires the same attention to detail, and managing our palettes was easy with David’s instruction.
Perhaps the most memorable experience was our first bites of David’s amazing chocolate. We began with his white chocolate, followed by milk chocolate, then a mild dark chocolate, and finally a deep dark chocolate. David gets his cacao beans from all over the world, including wonderful places such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Madagascar, and Hawaii. Here are a few thoughts that I had on the different chocolate that we sampled from that evening.
Wafer of Milk Chocolate (far left) – Great snap, rich and incredibly smooth. There were notes of honey and perhaps some vanilla. DELICIOUS!
Wafer of Deep Dark Chocolate (far right) – Bittersweet chocolate that had a deep smoky quality to it.
Nilgiri (top left) – Chocolate Chai. Whoa, this tastes like a chocolate and chai tea drink. It had nice spice! Very interesting.
Citral (bottom left) – Dark chocolate with lemongrass. There was a nice balance between the chocolate and floral lemongrass flavor, and it was not too overwhelming.
Sirona (top right) – Bittersweet bliss with fresh lime juice. The lime provided a nice fresh contrast to the chocolate. Margarita anyone?
Euphoria (bottom right) – Italian hazelnut gianduja, and nut paste folded into chocolate… wow, this is to DIE FOR. The creamy crunchy hazlenut paired nicely with the creamy milk chocolate.
– Final Thoughts –
David Bacco’s attention to detail is special. His perfect blend of chocolate and captivating flavors are unique and intriguing. The most amazing is that a lot of David’s knowledge is from self training over the past 17 years. Yet, he holds his own with some of the best around the world. We have traveled around the world sampling gourmet chocolates from Spain, France, Switzerland, and Germany to name a few. David’s chocolates are right up there and in some cases far and away better. (Side note: If you ever get a chance to travel to Barcelona, Spain you have to check out the macadams at Bubo – trust me, you may think you know what a chocolate covered macadamia nut should taste like, but after having one there, you’ll be ruined for life.. heh).
David Bacco is an alchemist of chocolate bliss. If you would like to try David’s chocolates, you can visit him online at http://www.bacco-chocolatier.com/. He also told us that he’s setup at the Cardiff Seaside Market. If you hurry, he actually has a few holiday specials as well.SPECIALS
One free Single Origin Bar (value is $7.95) with all order over $50.00.
A bundle of 6 chocolate bars for $40.00 (regularly $47.70).
or
10% off all orders through January 1. Not to be combined with the other two offers.
To take advantage of these, contact them at sales@bacco-chocolatier.com, subject: BLOG ME.
I was typing in “desserts” in the mira mesa area for yelp and came across David Bacco’s website. For further research, i checked to see if any food bloggers went here and lo and behold this post came up. good to know that Bacco is highly recommended. My friends are I are taking out one of our girlfriends for a belated birthday lunch in the mira mesa area. our M.O. is usually lunch at one place, then dessert at another. looks like i found the dessert place!
this must have been an amazing experience, this chocolate tasting, along with the tour! very nice!
CC, it was definitely a great experience! You may want to call ahead though. His workshop doesn’t really have a retail front. Enjoy!
Thanks for the tip! If he is not open on Sundays, then I’ll have to find another place.
hi michael – unfortunately they were closed today during our lunch outing. at least that’s what i could gather since they didn’t have any signage. the address on my gps matched the address on that building but it said someting else on the door. bummer.