Reading Roars!

Hotel Chocolat, a shop that sells grown-up (as I like to describe it) chocolate products, has opened in The Oracle. Hotel Chocolat offers all sorts (and I don’t mean of the liquorice kind) of luxury goodies, such as highly creative-looking half-kilo slabs (slate-like bars containing pieces of fruit) to more conventional drinking chocolate.

As a fan of dark, bitter chocolate in particular, I was excited by what I saw when I visited for the first time. Sure, their products weren’t cheap, but I was happy to pay extra for a richer chocolate experience. My purchases included little packets (£2.50) of drops: Aztec Chilli (a different kind of hot chocolate), Strawberry & Black Pepper, Caipirinha and, my favourite, Arabica Noir. Filling my mouth with the moody chocolate of the Arabica Noir drop was great, but biting into its coffee bean afterwards turned an interesting gastronomic experience into a significant one.

Indeed, I would recommend having an Arabica Noir choccie for breakfast. After popping a couple of these on a Sunday morning, fighting a mild hangover, I was ready for business. If you know what I mean.