Tasting Notes: This tiny L.A. shop is making excellent bean-to-bar chocolate

An intoxicating chocolate smell wafts through the air from behind a reclaimed wood bar. The man tending to the latest batch offers me a free sample, breaking off two fruity, bittersweet tiles from single-origin 70 percent Nicaraguan bar. Welcomes...

Dominga Velasco Rodriguez doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t know how to make mole. The head mole maker at Sabores Oaxaqueños in Koreatown has been making the meticulously seasoned, chile-thickened sauce since she was a child. Now, nearly six...

Name: Meiji Black Chocolate Origin: Japan Found at: Mitsuwa, Costa Mesa Cost: $1.69 Ingredients: Sugar, Cacao Mass, Palm Oil, Sunflower Oil, Shea Nuts Oil, Illipe Butter, Whole Milk Powder, Cocoa Butter, Soy Lecithin, Artificial Flavor. ] Why I...

Name: Meiji Meltyblend Origin: Japan Found at: 99 Ranch, Irvine Cost: $2.99 per box Ingredients: Meiji Mletyblend Creamy Chocolat Sugar, Vegetable Fat (Palm Oil, Sunflower Oil, Shea Oil), Cacao Mass, Whole Milk Powder, Cocoa Butter, Skim Milk...

The best thing I tasted last month may have been a lobe of fresh cacao fruit straight from its pod, a pale, glistening thing whose sweet essence whispered of litchi, vanilla and perhaps guanabana, with a crunchy seed whose rich bittersweetness...