Xocolatl / Chocolate

Part 5 | Chocolate in Modern Mexico (READ: Part 4)

Five hundred years after the conquest of the Aztec Empire, Mexico is an exciting, culturally vibrant, modern city. Still, chocolate is the nation’s “divine drink.” All over Mexico City, you will find many wonderful places to consume this beverage. There’s the very traditional Casa de Azulejos or the ever-popular El Moro where you can order your chocolate as sweet or bitter as you like, with or without milk, and don’t forget the churros to go with it. You can also wander over to the Condesa neighborhood to Mama Sarita’s and sample one of the eighty different kinds of chocolate drinks Evelio Arias offers in this little shop. Arias grows shade grown cacao beans on his own plantation in Tabasco, and his recipes have been handed down for generations. When you drink chocolate here, you are tasting a little bit of the history of Mexico.

If you needed one more reason to wander the lovely streets of the Condesa neighborhood, you now have it. You can check out the cool architecture like this lovely coral-colored house, the trendy clothing and jewelry shops, the lively bookstores, great restaurants and now you have a place to stop for hot chocolate.

But, Mexico is serious about continuing to develop chocolate creations, one of its great contributions to the world’s cuisine. Nowhere is this more evident than in Luis Robledo’s charming Condesa shop Tout Chocolat.

Robledo, pictured here, has been named one of the top ten chocolatiers in North America and has won first prize in the World Chocolate Master competition not just once but twice. The flavors of the chocolate candy he makes in Tout Chocolat are amazing—lime caramel, spiced caramel, creamy 100% Mexican chocolate ganache, white peach and apricot.

His chocolate, like Mexico itself, is a colorful and vibrant mixture of European and ancient cultures, old traditions and modern techniques. Art, culture, history and chocolate. Who could ask for more?