Kansas City: Christopher Elbow Chocolates

Chocolate. It’s one of the most beloved sweets in the world and almost everyone has an opinion concerning it—whether it be their favorite brand of chocolate, which type is the best, or which country has the best chocolate.

In Kansas City, there’s no shortage of opinions, especially when it comes to Christopher Elbow Chocolates. You may remember a little post about Glacé, possibly one of the yummiest ice cream joints in the midwest. Well, the guy that created this fantastic ice cream experience started off in artisan chocolates. And we just had to visit, obviously.

Of course, the plan was to simple eat one or two of the chocolates at the store and take the rest home to savor over the coming week—but we really shouldn’t have given ourselves that much credit. We ate them ALL. And it was the best.

Though you can already tell the chocolates are pretty fantastic (just look at the pictures!), you may be wondering a little more about the man behind the chocolate machine. Not only is he a Kansas City legend, but he is pretty well known around the world for his chocolate and ice cream creations. He started in the restaurant business, heading up a local KC restaurant, and then moved to Las Vegas to participate in a few of the biggest restaurants, including Delmonico Steakhouse (an Emeril Lagasse creation) and the Eiffel Tower Restaurant.

After returning to Kansas City to work at the American Restaurant, he discovered a passion for chocolate making, after sending out little chocolates as a dessert option and receiving MANY compliments (and fans and stalkers). He decided to start his own company shortly after and the chocolates took off! He now has a location in San Francisco as well as Kansas City, and a couple locations for Glacé Artisan Ice Cream in the KC metro area.

Now, on to the chocolate.

We decided to get a few different kinds of chocolates so that we could get a good idea of the flavor profiles Elbow liked. In different interviews, he’s said that he doesn’t like to push the limit, or create something “of the moment,” so most of his flavors were more traditional than some of the ice cream flavors he puts out in Glacé. Despite that, we enjoyed ever single flavor we bought–these chocolates were some of the best we’ve ever had.

From left to right, clockwise: Champagne (milk chocolate ganache blended with French champagne), Lime Vanilla (fresh lime juice and vanilla bean blended into a buttery caramel), Rosemary Caramel (caramel infused with fresh rosemary in dark chocolate), Vanilla Bean (caramel infused with Madagascar vanilla beans), unknown, Macadamia Praline (caramelized macadamia nuts blended with milk chocolate and Hawaiian sea salt), Bananas Foster (bananas and brown sugar flambeed with rum).

Though all of the flavors are more traditional, they were extremely delicious. The first thing we noticed was the thin shell that the caramels or ganaches were encased in. We cut all of the chocolates so that we could try all of the flavors, and the chocolates just crumbled under the weight of the knife–a great sign for those who get to eat the entire chocolate themselves! Once we tasted the chocolates, however, we were blown away that a chocolate could contain that much flavor! A lot of the times a dark or milk chocolate will mask the other flavor in the chocolate, but with Christopher Elbow Chocolates, the flavor comes bursting through like a ray of sunshine.

We wanted to try the Rosemary caramel specifically because it is such a unique chocolate flavor, and we weren’t disappointed at all. The flavor was so strong with a hint of sweetness, and was really a perfect caramel flavor. The Lime Vanilla caramel was similar. There was so much lime packed into such a little package!

The other thing we loved about the chocolates were the intense colors. Decorated with printed chocolate, or airbrushed by hand, these chocolates were a work of art–we felt bad eating them because they were so beautiful!

If you are interested in visiting Elbow Chocolates (which you TOTALLY should be), you can also get drinking chocolate, which we skipped because it was summertime.

Christopher Elbow Chocolates (1819 McGee St, Kansas City, MO 64108 // 816.842.1300)