Fuego de Guimauve, a new concept that highlights the elemental force of fire, introducing an interactive dining experience, invoking curiosity, and revisiting childhood excitement with an mature approach.

Loosely based on that childhood favorite s’more, the campfire treat, but improved upon for the complex adult taste buds.

This dish is comprised of ancho marshmallow, dulce de leche cake, chocolate covered white chocolate mousse, rum cherries, milks crumb, caramel, char.

The homemade guimauve (French for marshmallow) is flavored with ancho powder for a hint of robust smokiness and a touch of heat.  The dulce de leche cake acts an improvement on the graham cracker flavor profile.

Toasted white chocolate ganache to represent the lovely milliard reaction. The mousse quenelles are covered in dark chocolate to round out the chocolate flavor profile, and it invoke a sense of curiosity as to what is inside the chocolate wrapping.  This is a play on candy bars, childhood intrigue, and adult fascination.

Rum cherries to make it boozy, interesting, and fruity, and dehydrated chocolate mousse for texture.

These components sit atop of caramel sauce, to add a roasted flavor, to add comfort.

The marshmallow is flambéed tableside for an interactive diner experience, to have the element of fire transform the dish into some spectacular and unforgettable.

Black and white, with it’s Ying-yang balance, the good with the bad, a swirled confection laced with licorice.  It makes sense though, the dualistic dynamics, the ironic idiosyncrasies of this experience called life-  you need some tart to balance out all that sweet. Just a dash of vinegar, just a pinch of lime, so that the sugar doesn’t cling to your teeth, overtaking your mouth with a powerful flavor, creating mayhem on your taste buds.

Bittersweet is the most satisfying experience, the proof found in the perfection of dark chocolate.  Well balanced in its profile, this simple balance is inspiring with its gratification.

This year’s take on the Chocolate, Red Wine, and Roses theme- aka, every girls favorite indulgence for valentines days, a concept that I like to muse with on this date driven day.  Dinner for two, with all the decadence that cupid’s charm can provide.  Here, you get all those pesky whimsical factors in one delectable plate.

The Red Wine Velvet Cake- flavored and colored with a robust red wine, cut cleverly into 3 parts rhetorically inquiring how good you are at sharing, this chocolate laden cake is topped with candied cocoa nibs for added texture.

This light cake is embellished with red wine pearls,  enhancing the taste and mouth feel of sipping on a glass of your favorite red wine.

To highlight the natural dark fruit flavors and robust floral note in red wine, I added red rose petals and pomegranate juice.  The delicate wine pearls are marinated in a red rose petal and pomegranate glaze.

Light candied almonds are added to highlight the nuttiness in chocolate, to add a very subtle caramel note, to enhance the almond tasting notes found in wine.

Lastly, this red wine velvet cake is carried by a lightly toasted white chocolate mousse.

Eat your visceral hearts out.

Diving back into the icy depths of work so quickly after the plane brought me back to a place that is so utterly unlike my vacation reality, so cold and stress induced, I practically tripped over my shoes laces getting back to frontlines of the job to prepared for the holiday weekend, I am understanding a new type of fatigue, like all the sectors in my brain have been powered down, saving all my resources to funnel into the multitude of tasks that are stacked up for a weekend dedicated to celebrating love through food, more specifically embodied in one ingredient, chocolate.

Ah bravado, bubbling cheers, welcome to the sweet life.

Lush and lively, your favorite color.

Lost over the dark sea,

The pitch black swallows

Completely engulfs with its impenetrable hug

Indistinguishable with its black dimensions

Infinite circle of nothingness

Yet so close to the flickering stars

The constellations are magnified

Those once far off blinking binary dots

Seem close enough to wear on your finger like a diamond

The shores of the sea sing a strong song with its rhythmic sonic surges.

The lullaby of the waves draws you into a hypnotic daze as it pounds out its worries against the soft sandy beaches.

The force of the slashing waves sucks you in, spits you out.

Simply and surely as your breathing, this marine metronome mimics the earth’s internal clock, keeping time so you don’t have to.