It’s all about the feeling.

When you walk into the new Jacques Torres at Chelsea Market, the first thing you come to is the side of the espresso machine which takes your mind right to hot and delicious, which takes you to hot, delicious and chocolate. Jackpot. The barista was taking a moment’s pause and was leaning up against the counter. I started to ask him if he did shots of hot chocolate, and as he was pointing to the espresso cups, about to say something, another person working the counter, turned from the person she was speaking with, slapped a plastic menu on the counter and said, “here’s the menu.”
“Oh” I said, “I just wanted to ask…”
“if you want to order, that’s where you order from” and she pointed to the other end of the counter.
“I wanted to ask…”
“You order from there,” she said, and pointed.
I put my hands up like a criminal.
“I don’t want to order.” I said.
I am not an easy customer; I know that. There is no such thing as a 45 year old mother who gave birth with no drugs, living in New York City, who worked the night before until after 11 and woke up before 5 easy customer. But the truth is, we are everywhere. And you know what else? We are the ones buying chocolates and cocoa. We are the ones that need that cocoa. Mr. Torres makes a spicy hot chocolate that will knock your socks off, but his No Manners Manager took that warm and wonderful feeling of chocolate love and cracked it into tiny bits of sugar shard.
I went home–which is probably where I should have stayed anyway and made my own hot chocolate.

2 cups whole milk
4 ounces of best quality bittersweet chocolate (non of that baking chocolate)
1 heaping tablespoon of sugar
1 heaping tablespoon of dutch process cocoa (Droste is a good one)
2 tablespoons of heavy cream

Chop the chocolate into fine bits. Heat the milk. Stir the chocolate into the cream. Sift the sugar and cocoa together and stir into the milk. Adjust to taste with the heavy cream.

Feel it.