Just Desserts - 500 Places for Food and Wine Lovers - page 417

meltaways. Sounds like a blind taste test is
in order—any volunteers?

& 920/437-4400; www.chocolatecandies.
net), and Seroogy's Chocolates (in the
suburb of DePere, 144 N. Wisconsin St.;
& 920/336-1383; www.seroogys.com).
They're all old-timers—Seroogy's has
been around since 1899, Kaap's since
1907, Beerntsen's since 1929. Both Seroo-
gy's and Beerntsen's still occupy their
original locations, with gleaming glass
cases full of hand-dipped chocolates. Of
course, each claims to make the city's best

( Milwaukee (75 miles/121km from Osh-

kosh;100 miles/161km from Green Bay).
L $$ CopperLeaf Hotel, 300 W. Col-
lege Ave., Appleton ( & 877/303-0303 or
920/749-0303; www.copperleafhotel.
com). $$ Hotel Sierra Green Bay, 333
Main St., Green Bay ( & 888/695-7608 or
920/432-4555; www.hotel-sierra.com).

Chocolate World

472

Jin Patisserie
Artistry in Chocolate
Venice, California

The New-Agey elegance of this shop on
hip Abbott Kinney Road creates its own
cool oasis in funky surfer-haven Venice.
It's an upscale pastry cafe, it's a soothing
tea garden—but it's also the place to go
for some of the most refined chocolates in
the world.
Jin's owner, Kristy Choo, comes at the
art of chocolate-making from a globe-
hopping perspective. (At various points in
her career, she worked as an international
flight attendant, then as pastry chef at
Raffles Hotel in multicultural Singapore; so
culture-spanning comes naturally to her.)
Starting with a chocolate base of excep-
tional smoothness and complexity, she
then infuses her gift chocolates with vari-
ous essences from a botanical garden of
flavors—lavender, chrysanthemum, berga-
mot, jasmine, lemon grass, ginger, clove,
rosemary, sesame, lychee, and on and on.
Startling as some of these combinations
may sound, she almost always pulls them
off; it's not just about adding tastes, but
about suffusing the chocolate with scents
that play against the earthy chocolate
aroma in intriguing ways. Choo then paints
the top with a delicate tracery of color that
somehow expresses the personality of the
confection. Exquisite gift packaging in

monklike wood cartons or long berib-
boned silk boxes is just the icing on the
cake, so to speak.
The Zen-like tranquillity of this shady
little courtyard cafe puts you in the right
mood to taste the subtleties of these
chocolates. With the murmur of a stone
fountain in the background, shaded by
banana trees and tufts of reeds outside
the tidy little blue bungalow, you can sit
down and order dainty pastries—many of
them Asian influenced or tea flavored—as
well as a wide range of teas from around
the world. (Regulars swear by her luscious,
inventively flavored macaroons.) Though
the meal may be called “afternoon tea,”
there's absolutely nothing dowdy about it.

1202 Abbott Kinney Rd., Venice ( & 310/
399-8801; www.jinpatisserie.com).
( Los Angeles International (6 3 ⁄ 4 miles/
11km).
L $$$ Peninsula Beverly Hills, 9882

S. Santa Monica Blvd. ( & 800/462-7899 or
310/551-2888; www.peninsula.com). $
Best Western Marina Pacific Hotel,
1697 Pacific Ave., Venice ( & 800/786-7789
or 310/452-1111; www.mphotel.com).