Happy New Year! What’s better than starting the new year with a post on chocolate? Chocolate is one of the essential food groups in my book. Let’s be honest: we can all use the love we get from eating chocolate; we can all use a little more love in our lives. Unscientifically speaking, dark chocolate helps to boost serotonin, phenylethylamine, and oxytocin hormones in the brain and produces a sense of euphoria and well-being. Or speaking plainly, the feeling of love. Cheers to a new year filled with much love and happiness!
Below is a recap of my experience at Max Brenner in New York City, where they aim to populate the world with all things chocolate. This cafe is very similar to juliette & Chocolat in Montreal; click here to see my post on this other chocolate joint in both English and French.
Max Brenner has drinks, food, and desserts made out of chocolate. Max Brenner has a few large menus (Desserts, Food, Kids, and Seasonal) which take a while to sort through. I am not a fan of a large selection on any menu because I feel an establishment cannot offer high quality food when a list is long and in four different sections. It’s craziness and it’s trying to be everything to everyone. Simply impossible!
The Brenner Burger: Max’s secret barbeque sauce, lettuce, tomato, cheddar & a vidalia onion ring on top. This was acceptable but no need to go to Max Brenner for a regular burger.
Really-Cheesy Lobster Mac & Cheese: fresh Maine lobster, special 5-cheese blend, tomatoes. It was good and worth the high calories. Would repeat.
Blackened Skirt Steak & Mushroom Quesadilla: fire-roasted jalapeño salsa and sour cream. This dish sounded better than it tasted. Would not repeat.
By this point, we were way too full to have more food. But we persevered and went ahead with the Sharing Fondue for Two and Crystal Churros Fondue. This is the highlight and the point of the entire meal.
Sharing Fondue for Two: a tasting of: tutti frutti waffle, fluffy chocolate sponge cake, banana tempura, milk & white chocolate bark, chocolate fondue with fresh fruit and marshmallows. Roast over your own grill and dip into creamy pure chocolate sauce. Served with Choco-pops and chocolate sauce on the side to pour. All I saw was “Chocolate. Chocolate. Chocolate. and Chocolate.” Nothing else mattered.
We made sure we got the dark chocolate sauce for the fondue. This was good. But can you believe it? By then I felt it was way too much chocolate and too much love! A case can be made to have too much of a good thing.
Crystal Churros Fondue: muddled raspberries, warm toffee sauce and your choice of milk, dark or white chocolate fondue for dipping. We got this dish for the churros and they were not so special. By then, it was sugar overload and I felt a crush coming on along with a headache resulting from the bad mojito that I had. Instead of experiencing euphoria and love, I fell asleep at the movie “Interstellar” and slept through half the movie.
Would I repeat this restaurant? This is a good option for tourists, dates and kids. It’s a good conversation piece and an interesting experience. The food was not particularly anything and neither was the fondue. The hype was bigger than the quality it delivered. Now in full circle, linking the food back to the chocolate love experience: the moral of this post is that better find your love and happiness at the right spot otherwise you may end up sleeping through your life. And I realized that this conclusion is as cheesy as the cheesy Lobster Mac and Cheese.
This experience took place at
Max Brenner
841 Broadway
New York, NY
(646) 467-8803
Peilin Corbanese 