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For those keeping score, Brian Pelletier and his cohorts at Kakao Chocolate have come up with a long list of experimental confections and candy that sound wacky, but actually taste superb. We’re referring to the curry cashew brittle; pumpkin pie-flavored pates de fruit; stout- and hops-flavored truffles; bacon pecan brittle (Lord, yes!); butternut-squash-flavored marshmallows; raspberry star anise dark-chocolate bark; white pepper and sea-salt dark-chocolate bark; the “Elvis truffle” with peanut butter, banana, and bacon; and even a cocoa-based barbecue rub.
The counter-intuitive combos have become sufficiently rife amongst the gourmet crowd that now, things that we would dare each other to eat as children have become actual food items.The latest example: barbecued potato chips with chocolate. Doesn’t that sound like something Oscar the Grouch would eat for lunch? It’s something you can buy at Kakao, in two forms, in fact: barbecued chips dipped in semi sweet chocolate (below left), and dark bark studded with chip crumbles (below right).
“This way it can appeal to two kinds of people,” explained Kakao Big Chip Brain Pelletier. “People that love chips and want them with some chocolate, and people who love the chocolate and want more of that flavor, with some of the flavor from the chips.”
These aren’t just any barbecued chips. They’re the Kickers, a spicy chip introduced just this year by the Billy Goat Chip Company on Loughborough Ave., which makes the new mash-up a doubly local product (whoop-whoop!). When the flavors of the genuinely spicy chip and the deep, dark chocolate meet on your tongue, it might be an “acquired taste” for some, but others, used to the many spicy/chocolate combos that have been introduced in recent years (including Kakao’s own chili-pepper truffle, mango-chili truffle, and spicy Mexican-chocolate bark), will make a beeline for it.
From whence cometh this wild idear?
“It starts with the idea that we love to do things with local products,” said Pelletier, “like sourcing the lavender for the lavender truffle from Eureka, and collaborations with companies like Schlafly and Rue Lafayette. We’ve also had customers ask us if we have ever done chocolate over potato chips, and we hadn’t – it’s not really something in our sweet spot, so to speak. I started thinking about it, but it wasn’t until the Billy Goat people introduced Kickers that I knew instantly that we could do it. The chips are physically strong, so they can stand up to being dipped in chocolate, and the Kickers have a spice that stands up to the dark chocolate, and vice-versa.”
It turns out that Kakao is not the only dessert specialist in town to incorporate Billy Goat Kickers into a sweet dish. Reine Bayoc of SweetArt mixes them with house-made caramel and salt as a spicy/sweet topping for her “Jezebel Bars,” as described by the Riverfront Times here.
And other local concerns have recently married chocolate with unusual ingredients, too. Consider Companion Baking’s partnership with Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate to produce “Breaded Bliss,” clusters of toasted-bread nuggets in dark chocolate; the “fried onion/almond praline” and the “Gojira” ghost chili-and-lime truffle, at Rick Jordan’s RJ Chocolatier in Chesterfield; the Balsamic-vinegar truffle available at Extra Virgin, made in collaboration with Lake Forest Confections in nearby Clayton; or the porcini-mushroom truffle, available through Bissinger’s. (And don’t forget the chocolate-dipped bacon that makes an appearance on various menus these days, during the “Bacon Renaissance.”
Meanwhile, back at Kakao, the Willy Wonka-esque Pelletier and his happy Oompa Loompas are offering the Billy Boat Kicker dipped chips and bark alongside holiday favorites like sea salt caramels; truffles in seasonal flavors like eggnog and gingerbread; candy cane bark in white and dark chocolate; a molded, seven-pound, 18” hollow chocolate Santa (below left), and chocolate nutcracker figurines (below right).
But what’s next in the realm of local-chocolate innovations? Feel free to steal these ideas: Gus’ Pretzels toasted and dipped in chocolate; chocolate bark slathered in Grandma's Nuts; or, the fantasy that will finally bridge the gap between the sexes – the chocolate-dipped White Castle.
Okay… that last one was an intense thought.
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Billy Goat Kickers Dark Bark, $3 / 2-oz. package; two large Billy Goat Kickers chips dipped in semi sweet chocolate, $1.50
Kakao Chocolate
7272 Manchester (314-645-4446)
& 2301 S. Jefferson (314-771-2310)
