Chalk & Chocolate In Berkeley

Sunday, June 7. 2009

Last week was Berkeley's annual Chalk and Chocolate festival, which is held in Gourmet Gulch (Shattuck Ave. from University to Solano, where Chez Panisse is). The idea of the festival is to support both chalk sidewalk art and chocolate at local merchants.

Unfortunately, Saturday turned out to be unexpectedly cold and grey, so I think there were less people than expected for the festival. Certainly it seemed kind of sparse when we were there; it was a long walk between stations/stores. But, they had chalk:

And they had chocolate:

The idea of the festival is that you buy tickets from one of several festival booths, and then local stores (some of which are food places, some not) sell you chocolate goodies for 1 to 5 tickets, depending on the item. As most truffles were only 1 or 2 tickets, this was actually a pretty good deal.

Xocolate Bar were out with their cast dark chocolate religious iconography (chocolate buddhas, shivas, venuses, etc.).

Here Kris enjoys a chocolate ganache cupcake from the Virginia Bakery. The chocolate smile says it all, doesn't it?

But, the #1 chocolate experience for the day was served by Lo Coco's Restaurant: chocolate-ricotta pizza. Wow. I tried to talk them into making it a regular menu item so I could come back and have it again.

So, Chalk & Chocolate: worth it if the weather is nice, you live in Berkeley, or you're just a chocoholic and wanted to drop by the CheeseBoard anyway. Otherwise, a bit low-key.

Posted by The Fuzzy Chef in Events at 15:47 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

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Well, there's the old saying "like as chalk and cheese", meaning not very much alike at all, really. So maybe they could include the cheese mongers next year! I make a chocolate-ricotta lasagna with chocolate pasta that's quite wonderful. I will have to try the pizza.

#1 BeckyH on 2009-06-08 05:56 (Reply)

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