Burnt Caramel Ginger Heart

Burnt Caramel Ginger Heart
Originally uploaded by thegreatplotnik.

The Great Plotnik, currently masquerading as The Great Choco-nik during his assignment to review and photograph all the great chocolate shops in Saint Plotniko, yesterday afternoon went to the Upper, Middle and Working classes of Chocoholicism.

Upper class: Recchiuti Confections, in the Ferry Building Downtown. Michael Recchiuti is a friendly and fascinating guy, who started as a pastry chef and now creates special truffle lines for Williams-Sonoma as well as having his own retail shop. The Burnt Caramel truffle, his signature piece, is to fall over dead with a smile on your face. It puts many other more famous Saint Plotniko truffles to shame. Boxed chocolates come in at around $50 a pound, including one flecked with French sea salt that sounds gross but isn't.

Middle Class: Ghirardelli Chocolates in Ghirardelli Square at the Wharf. The manager could not have been nicer, seeing as he has to deal all day with whining tourists: "It's COLD down here!" Ghirardelli chocolate is a Saint Plotniko tradition, starting when Domenico Ghirardelli and James Lick were neighbors in Peru before they came North in the 1840s. But the choc isn't all that great -- anything you can buy in every supermarket in America can't be all that special, and it isn't. Maybe it used to be, when Fisherman's Wharf still had fish.

Lower Class: The ladies at See's Candies still wear those white smocks with the oversized black bow ties and name tags. They're oversized themselves, or undersized, or in some other way slightly off kilter, maybe a limp, maybe one eye pointing to the dark chocolate and the other to the milk chocolate, and they're grouchy as ever and still hand you the obligatory free sample like you're collecting their taxes. But the Scotch Kisses are still chewy and delicious, oh and the lollipops, and the Mocha Crisps, and don't forget the Krispys and a full FIVE POUND box of hefty, tasty See's chocolates is only $68 -- less than one pound in some of the fancy shops. Five pounds of chocolate contains all the saturated fat for your entire life. And it's good, dude! It's still very, very good. It ain't Recchiutti. But Recchiutti ain't Mary See, either.