Of course, I was curious but also a little scared...
This was one of those frou frou/high end chocolate shops. Excuse me, confectioners...
It's very small inside but decorated for the upcoming Valentine's holiday, hence the plethora of hearts.
This being a "high end" place...the prices matched the locale.
Creatively flavored chocolate bars were lined up on the shelves along with assorted chocolate bon bons...
In the display cases were beautiful handmade chocolates.
If you wanted, you could get a heart shaped box to put even more chocolates inside.
Happy "early" Valentine's Day to us, yeah...
What was the damage? The box of 6 was....gulp, $18 fkg bones! Three bucks for each piece. The bar was $7 (yowzah).
The flavor menu from the mini booklet they gave us:
The flavors we got were: Spicy Passion, Pinenut Cinnamon & Salt, Bananas Foster, Peanut Butter and Jelly, Rosewater Caramel, and Caramel Latte.
We each chose three. My favorite (my choice) was the Spicy Passion. Be careful if you get this. When you bite it, the caramel inside will, for lack of a better word, "gush" out! It was messier than expected but wow, that caramel filling was so good! The spices were on the outer portion of the chocolate. My least favorite was one of Bert's choices, the white and black one. It looks like it should be cookies and cream flavor but it was this horrible pinenut cinnamon flavor. It reminded me of the cinnamon drink they give you at the end of your meal at Buga (a Korean bbq place on Balboa). This was NOT a flavor that should exist for candy.
We "savored" the chocolates the night before Valentine's since we would be going on a mini vacatioin (aka "food road trip"). Other favorites were the bananas foster and the PB&J flavor. Surprisingly, I couldn't really taste the "rosewater" in the heart shaped chocolate. The flavor was very subtle. I normally don't like herb or floral flavors in candy. Asides from the heart shaped and spicy passion flavors, the fillings of the other chocolates were not "goopy" and had more solidity to them.
Lastly, the bar of chocolate was Bert's choice.
We haven't opened it yet but plan to enjoy it eventually...like really soon.!
Dallman Fine Chocolates (in Flower Hill Promenade)
2670 Via de la Valle - A270
Del Mar, CA 92014
(858) 720-1933
www.dallmannconfections.com
The other location of Dallman is at the new Headquarters near Seaport Village. I expect they will get a lot of business from visiting tourists and folks who are curious about all of the new happening restaurants opening up over there.
These chocolates were high quality and we paid dearly for it. A pre-Valentine's "splurge" if you will. I'm not sure if I would spring nearly $20 for a half dozen chocolates again though. Every piece was distinctive and you could taste the quality in the ingredients. These are chocolates that you really need to taste slowly to appreciate. Russel Stover this ain't!
5 comments:
I had a sample of Dallman's when I visited the Headquarters and it was good (it was a sample of caramel with dark chocolate and grey salt - it was good). I did get my mom a bag of the chocolate covered macadamia nuts for Christmas and I have to say they were really, really good. There are a few flavors I'd really like to try but think twice above because of the price tag! Cool that you guys treated yourself though - the chocolates are really pretty.
hi Mary - yeah, their chocolates were totally good but holy $#@%, they are a bit price prohibitive!
ooh, grey salt sounds intriguing!
So glad I don't crave chocolate as much as others. The items you bought do have me curious. May stop there and try one or two. {Russell Stover and Whitmans Chocolates are the same company; we've stopped at their Outlet Store in Missouri-free samples, boxes of misshapens and aisles of every flavor you could imagine, some in special Commemorative boxes(I wanted the Elvis one a few years ago)}
The pinenut cinnamon and salt wasn't that bad. You just hate cinnamon, that's all. Bacon and Smoked Salt tonight! :)
hi cathy - ooh, misshapen candies! TC would like those! we always like seeing out the 'mutants'.
bert - yes it was. gross. pinenut + cinnamon = barf.
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