Review of Rose City Chocolates

With all of the focus on the emerging American chocolate movement these days, it's easy to forget about the original gourmet standard-bearer, Belgian chocolate. Rose City Chocolates is a small New Jersey-based chocolate retailer that works with a Belgian manufacturer to craft a large line of specialty chocolates and truffles. The sampler box I tried from Rose City Chocolates had some great examples of Belgian chocolate craftsmanship, although not all of the chocolates were to my taste.

The Good

The Smooth Caramel chocolate was, in a word, amazing. A sweet (but not too sweet) and gooey caramel is encased in a smooth, dark chocolate with a nice shine and snap. The chocolate isn’t too cloying, and this dark undertone is the perfect compliment to the creamy caramel. I could easily polish off a whole box of these, so I was glad to see that they sell a box composed entirely of Smooth Caramel chocolates. This is a perfect example of a caramel-filled chocolate.

I also loved the Amarena Cherry Ganache candy. A whole Amarena cherry is encased in white chocolate ganache and robed in dark chocolate. The dark chocolate coating is quite bitter (which I happen to like) and it contrasts nicely with the very sweet white chocolate and the sweet-tart cherry. The whole candy has a great fruit taste and a nice balance of flavors and textures.

Rose City has a number of hazelnut-chocolate candies, and the one I liked best was the Hazelnut Heart. This heart-shaped chocolate comes wrapped in eye-catching pink foil and bursts with nutty flavor. The ganache is a great balance of savory hazelnut and semi-sweet dark chocolate, and the texture is smooth and creamy.

Several other chocolates were fine. By this I mean that they were pleasant to eat, but nothing that I would seek out or recommend as a special treat. The Chocolate Ganache candy has a good chocolate flavor but the chocolate itself seemed of mediocre quality. Perhaps it’s the same chocolate used in all of the chocolate candies, but the absence of accompanying flavors made its shortcomings more noticeable. The Coffee Cup candy had a mild coffee flavor that accompanied a hazelnut cream in a dark chocolate shell. The flavors were milky and sweet and utterly inoffensive. The Coffee Ganache candy had a luscious liquidy ganache encased in a white chocolate shell surrounding a whole hazelnut. The candy was a bit too sweet, but the coffee flavor was strong and was nicely offset by the hazelnut.

The Bad

The candies I didn’t like all shared similar shortcomings: a chalky, dry texture and a lack of clear flavor. The Orange Ganache candy lacked a vibrant orange flavor and mostly tasted like mediocre milk chocolate. The Hazelnut Crown was a big disappointment. Hazelnut and chocolate is a time-honored flavor combination and one of the standards of Belgian and French chocolate. This particular example featured dull milk chocolate and a weak hazelnut taste. The texture was stiff and dry, with none of the silky mouthfeel one expects from a chocolate. The worst offender, however, was the Earl Grey chocolate. I had to double and triple check the enclosed chocolate guide to determine what I was eating, because it was nearly impossible to tell the flavor of the candy. The texture was chalky and dry, with bits of what I assume to be dried tea in the ganache itself.

Final Thoughts

I cannot recommend Rose City Chocolates without reservation, but I do feel that the pieces I loved—the Smooth Caramel, the Amarena Cherry and the Hazelnut Heart—were all excellent candies of extremely high quality. The prices are in line with other gourmet chocolate companies—a 25-piece assortment (13 oz) is under $25. Perhaps one of their greatest assets is the wide variety of packaging and customizing options available. In addition to being able to choose from dozens of flavors, customers can select special packaging like heart-shaped boxes, gift towers and arrangements, and custom packaging for holidays and corporate gifts.