Today I met some friends for espresso and fish chocolates at a little cafe in Anchorage. Yeah, fish chocolates.
The chocolates, topped with anchovies and salmon, are from the truffle collection at the Modern Dwellers Chocolate Lounge, which is, not surprisingly, owned and operated by artists. Any time you put artists in charge, you're bound to get some things right and some things, well, a little off.
On the right side, there's the locale. Like everything else in America, the cafe is located in a strip mall, but once you're inside, you could easily be in a normal, proper city cafe where people who aren't completely crazy go. The furniture is custom designed and superbly hip. There's artwork on the walls. Instead of hauling out their laptops and clacking away, people here actually talk to one another and have conversations. No, really, they do. It's a nice place.
The menu is where things get a little unusual though, with an ambitious collection of handmade chocolate truffles. Some are basic, like raspberry, cherry and orange. Others are less conventional, made with things like tequila, nori, pink Hawaiian sea salt and berbere.
By now though, most chocolate aficionados are used to trendy chocolate with exotic ingredients. You can pick up a bar of Vosges' chocolate with curry or wasabi almost anywhere these days. It's hard to surprise us anymore. Here are some iPhone pictures of two notables from Modern Dwellers that manage to do that.
The first is Anchovy Amour - blueberry ganache with dark chocolate and anchovy, covered in (what else?) iridescent, disco-blue luster dust.
The other is a Salmon Surprise - bittersweet honey and pepper ganache, dark chocolate shell, topped with smoked Alaskan salmon.
It's a nice nod to a local theme, but unless you're Heston Blumenthol, you should seriously think twice before mixing things like, say, chocolate and meat. I know the combination of chocolate and anchovies and blueberries sounds perfectly delicious, but, as it turns out, it's not. Not even close. And in decorating chocolate, a little garnish on top to tell you what's inside is totally cool. Dipping the chocolate in paint from top to bottom generally is not, even under the pretext of being artsy. The customer can't tell whether it's light or dark or whether it's even been tempered properly, with a grainy finish or a buttery finish or whatever (mine was a little chalky).
I wish I could say the fish chocolates taste great but they don't. They're just kind of weird and fun to look at. But then again, so are my friends. It's too cold to go back outside, so I guess I'll just enjoy both. And maybe work my way through the rest of the truffle collection. It doesn't always work, but I'm glad there are creative types around who are willing to try something new.
Modern Dwellers Chocolate Lounge, 751 East 36th Ave, Anchorage, Alaska. Handmade truffles at about $2.95 each.
