Omnivore - Back to the Sugar-Coated Radical

Good news for Taria Camerino

I found myself in the grip of a chocolate craving Thursday afternoon, so I stopped by the Sugar-Coated Radical for one, maybe two pieces of Taria Camerino’s magical creations.

I ended up with three pieces of chocolate, plus a tiny shortbread cookie and a startlingly intense gumdrop-like thing with a name I can’t recall. I ate all five within an hour. The chocolate had Camerino’s usual blend of unexpected flavors, from fruity to piquant. The latter was featured in a perfect metaphor of jouissance: a sweet, slightly hard heart with a creamy center doused with a strong hit of chipotle. Yes, love can be ecstatically painful, but you can make it taste really really good with chocolate.

Camerino had some very good news. Claudio Corallo Chocolate in Seattle will likely be selling her handiwork. The shop is the American flagship store featuring chocolate from Corallo’s cacao plantation in Principe, an island off the coast of West Africa. Camerino uses the renowned chocolate in her work.

Here’s a BBC piece on Corallo’s chocolate.