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Crystal Cove Promenade Readying for New Eateries: Sage, Modo Mio, Mastro's Ocean Club
EXECUTIVE DINING
Nothing compares to the famed Bodega Chocolates stores.
Sure, there are gift baskets and flower arrangements, there are special gift shoppers and unique boutiques to help with gift-giving, but none of it compares to what Bodega sells at its two retail locations. One store is at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa and the other store is in The Grove at Farmer's Market in Los Angeles.
There are the big chains, all of which have their terrific signature chocolates made with secret recipes. Yet, they are not peers in any way of Bodega.
Am I really serious about my praise? You bet. I simply could insist that these are the creamiest, richest, most mouth-watering chocolates I've encountered in a lifetime spent as a chocoholic who has tried to taste the best of the U.S. and Europe.
Bodega is a family-run business where making everything by hand still is revered.
Given equal weight is the fact that the three young relatives who now run the business-cousins Jene, Pat and Martucci-use a mixture of the world's most famous raw chocolate to get the texture and taste in their handful of products that has set the culinary world and the media abuzz.
Of no less importance, all their chocolate and other products are kosher-certified.
The trio's great-grandmother had a motto that remains: "Nothing but the finest. Nothing but the best. No exceptions. This they will remember."
So every chocolate truffle bar, every tea cake, every chocolate-dipped cookie is made by hand. In the case of the elegant tasting truffle bars, it begins with real people measuring out precise amounts of dark chocolate for the creamy fillings, tempering the chocolate, hand-forming the mixture into thick slabs and then...