The Angelina Drip

Angelina’s is a restaurant on the Rue de Rivoli that is famous for its hot chocolate. It also is famous for its desserts, tarts and confections including something called the Mont Blanc which resembles a cupcake with cornrows (and will send Diabetics running from the contact sugar high).

We arrived for lunch on a Saturday and the place was packed with tourists enjoying the cuisine. It is a large and elegant feeling restaurant with molded sconces and marble tables. It is easy to imagine the social set of old Paris lunching here in the glory days when the Louvre was still a palace.

Well, easy if you squint out the tourists with “J’Aime Paris” t-shirts sitting at all the tables.
But don’t squint too hard because you will miss something that is uniquely Angelina. You see, everyone who comes here does so because of the hot chocolate. It doesn’t matter what time of day, or how hot it is outside, if you come to Angelina’s then you have to get the hot chocolate.

The hot chocolate served here is served in small white pitchers along with a little ramekin of whipped cream. You then pour the chocolate into your cup and add a dollop of cream, stir until the cream is dissolved and then sip. It takes a moment to get used to the thickness of the drink, which is close to gravy in texture, American’s used to packaged Swiss Miss are going to be surprised. But the flavor is incredible and so much worth the effort of getting there.

I noticed, however, that because of the thick viscosity of the chocolate that it is virtually impossible to pour it without a thin line of the stuff running down the pure white pitcher from the lip. The chocolate is so thick that it does not even run down the full length of the pitcher, rather it makes it as far as the pitcher’s fat belly.

I was embarrassed to see this obviously messy occurrence in such an elegant surrounding, until I noticed that every other table was graced with a pitcher that had the same telltale drip. In fact, upon closer examination, my own pitcher had the ghosts of numerous such previous drips that had been washed off over the years.

The Angelina Drip is a badge of having enjoyed something truly sublime, and uniquely Parisian.