What’s the Next Status Chocolate Bar?

Casa Bosques is an art and design bookstore in Mexico City, a project of the branding and architecture firm Savvy. Casa Bosques is also the name of their chocolate, with simple, clean, yet friendly packaging that echoes the ethos of the store. This specific sensibility has been quickly embraced by packaging nerds and members of the design community; you can find the bars in their distinctive, envelope-like packaging at Saturdays in Soho, Homecoming in Greenpoint, even the gift shop at the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art. “It’s almost like a little envelope,” explains Helsby of Dimes. “Rather than the classic foil-wrapped [bar] with a nice piece of paper, this is kind of a little pouch.” Sasha Laing of Import News jokes, “I almost wonder if they’re a little bit too beautiful and that people don’t know it’s chocolate.”

Campbell calls the chocolate beautiful, as well, with unique inclusions that are as carefully sourced as the cacao beans, much of which is single-origin from the Dominican Republic and dark, at 72 percent. “I’m always a sucker for pink peppercorn on anything,” she admits, “and they do a pink peppercorn and dark chocolate. They also have a coconut and curry dark chocolate, which is fun. I don’t think anyone else that we carry has anything like that currently.” Laing calls their cardamom bar “amazing.”

But what elevate Casa Bosques to front-runner for the title of the next status chocolate are the careful collaborations that still somehow feature their most experimental flavors and the most eye-catching packaging on their roster. Casa Bosques’ collaboration with the interiors magazine Apartamento features a bar of single-origin dark chocolate with toasted buckwheat that features a full-bleed photo of a (somehow stylish) toilet seat on the sleeve. A collaboration with Dimes features some of the go-to ingredients from their kitchen, explains Helsby, including coconut and puffed quinoa. The result is a grown-up version of “the old-school crackle bar,” says Campbell, in a beautiful, blue gradient package.

I was first tipped off to Askinosie Chocolate by Jeni Britton Bauer, founder of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams and James Beard Award–winning author of two cookbooks, who described the Missouri–based company’s chocolate as “the perfect topping and complement to ice cream” in an interview. It popped up on my radar several months later, when Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer brought a tin of Askinosie’s chocolate-covered malt balls to the Strategist’s Celebrity White Elephant (and it was one of the most-stolen items). “One hundred percent of the chocolate he sells is 1,000 percent traceable to the farmer who grew the cocoa beans himself. That’s probably not something you find on your average Whopper,” Meyer said of these confections.

And like the malt balls, Askinosie’s chocolate bars are held to the same high standard of transparency and traceability. So much so, in fact, that the bars feature photographs of the farmers the company works with on their labels. But what makes the brand especially giftable are their crowd-pleasing collaborations, like a rosemary and avocado dark chocolate bar made with Heath Ceramics, and a jammy red raspberry bar with American Spoon. Nick Cardoni, shop manager for the Meadow in Manhattan’s West Village, also notes, “If there’s a bar that’s going to change your mind about white chocolate,” it’s Askinosie’s, which uses goat’s milk powder and single-origin chocolate to make this oft-maligned type of bar.

And even though Shawn Askinosie has been making this chocolate since 2005, the Springfield-based brand is arguably more popular than ever. According to Graeber, it was another best-selling bar for the holiday season, alongside the Raaka — though at this point, it’s more of a solid, never-fail standby than the next status chocolate.

San Francisco–based Dandelion Chocolate makes what Giller describes as “quintessentially bean-to-bar chocolate, in that they only use cocoa beans and sugar and spend a lot of time sourcing beans and talking to farmers.” And though the single-origin chocolate, sourced from locations around the globe, including Liberia, Madagascar, and Tanzania, is much-lauded, and has been making chocolate in the Mission District of San Francisco since 2010, the packaging is what makes these bars truly giftable. Each is wrapped in handcrafted brown paper with intricate gold detailing. Two of the shop managers I interviewed compared it to “nice wallpaper,” subtle yet beautiful. But since the chocolate-makers at Dandelion let the terroir of the cacao beans shine through in each bar, without any inclusions like nuts or dried fruit, the differences can be a little more subtle. As a result, this is very much a true chocolate lover’s chocolate bar, with perhaps less mass appeal than a bar with a ton of sweet additions and inclusions — and that’s why it’s just an honorable mention — but for the right person, it’s going to be incredible.

There are a couple of easy comparisons you could make between Dandelion and Marou Chocolate. Both have delicate gold detailing on their packaging, though with Marou, it’s overlaid on brightly colored paper. And like Dandelion, Marou also focuses on single-origin bars. But unlike Dandelion, and many other terroir-focused chocolatiers, Marou limits their source of beans to one country: Vietnam. The result is a dark-yet-spicy, bean-to-bar chocolate that’s fairly hardcore, yet it still almost sold out at Campbell & Co. this holiday season. That’s probably because they’re “some of the prettiest bars,” according to Campbell. The downside is that the distribution is still relatively limited, so they might not ever become as big as some of the other makers on this list. But their inclusion bars, like one with popped rice and another with candied chili, are certainly status-y, since they’re only available at their shop in Ho Chi Minh City.

If you’re looking for a chocolate bar with pedigree, you can’t go wrong with K+M Chocolate. It’s a line of chocolate from Thomas Keller, the Michelin-starred chef behind Per Se and French Laundry who uses these chocolates in his restaurants’ desserts, and according to Sara McMonigle, category manager of packaged good and private label at Dean & DeLuca, it’s “the most luxurious one that we carry.” It’s also the most expensive single bar, at $15 each, and yet, “they’re doing really well,” says McMonigle, calling it one of the New York City grocery chain’s “top-selling lines.”

The packaging is simple, especially compared to some of the other trendier or more gilded options on this list, in mostly black-and-white with a sans-serif logo — but the final product comes across as classic, rather than cold. The chocolate, too, is impeccably sourced and mostly single-origin, from Madagascar, Peru, and Nicaragua. And the production method is unique, using high-end, extra-virgin olive oil in the production of each bar, instead of cocoa butter, which helps with the silky texture. For gifting purposes, K+M Chocolate also makes an elegant gift box with a little grosgrain bow, for those who want to give more than one bar at a time.

On the other end of the spectrum from these solid chocolate bars are the fruit-and-nut-loaded, crowd-pleasing Bark Bars from Cacao Prieto. They’re one of Campbell’s favorite gifts, especially for the holidays, and their inclusions, like pecan and sour cherry or hazelnut and rum raisin, resonate with her customers. “Someone just came in and literally bought all of the Cacao Prieto Bark Bars, every single one of them,” she told me in December, just days before Christmas. “That’s the appeal, if someone’s like, ‘I’m going to give them to my entire office.’” Helbsy, from Dimes, agrees: “They are always a go-to gift, and it’s all single-origin chocolate, which is a nice extra touch.”