(upbeat jazz music)

I love dark chocolate.

Chocolate makes me happy, man.

It gets me through some stressful days.

It's sweet. It just brings joy to my life.

What's there not to like about chocolate?

Just thinking about chocolate is making my mouth water, and it's making my heart happy because chocolate has always been a reward.

It's always been an indulgence.

Chocolate is the purest joy in the world next to dogs and cats.

I think 100% chocolate is going to be mind-blowingly amazing, super sweet.

Pure dark chocolate, it's gonna be the best.

Yeah.

So we are here at Tache, in the Lower East Side of New York City, and we are going to learn all about chocolate and eventually try 100% pure chocolate.

So, Aditi, tell us a little bit about Tache.

Sure, so tache means spot or smudge in French because every time I'm wearing my chef coat or my apron, I usually have a smudge of chocolate on it somewhere.

So hopefully you will leave with a smudge of chocolate on you.

Actually, you don't have aprons, so...

Hopefully it'll be in your mouth.

So, I do have a variety of chocolate.

So, white chocolate, not real chocolate, guys.

What?

Yeah, white chocolate is made up of cocoa butter, milk solids, and sugar.

So, it contains absolutely no cacao.

My mind is blown right now.

So this isn't real chocolate?

Let's go up the scale.

So, let's try some milk chocolate.

Loving it.

This is what heaven is like.

The main differences between milk and dark, milk chocolate contains a ton more milk in it and it also contains some cocoa mass, some vanilla to give it a little bit of flavor, and some cocoa butter.

It says it's only 35% chocolate, so it can only get better from here, right?

Yeah, exactly. It has to.

So, the next one that you guys are trying is an 81

I think you'll be able to taste more of the nuances in it.

This is a different level.

This is sort of like, there's a bitterness to this.

It's just like blowing my mind to taste pure chocolate.

It's like, and we haven't even reached pure chocolate yet.

We're at like, 81%.

We haven't reached nirvana?

No. (laughing)

Obviously, 100% chocolate is 100% chocolate, but what does that mean?

So, 100% chocolate comes with no frills attached, so it is just an organic chocolate mass.

Basically, they take cacao beans and they ground them up nice and fine, and then they form it into a nice little brick that looks like that.

When we get it, we just chip away at it and put it into our double boiler over there and melt it and make it into wonderful concoctions.

I like that.

All right, all right.

I think that looks great.

Let's get ready for these silky mouth feels.

All right.

Heaven tastes a little different than I thought.

Your chocolate is definitely bold.

Whoa, man. Bitter is just it.

That is like the best way to describe this.

I don't know, kind of like the taste of tobacco or like, a cigar.

So this is like literally day and night.

I mean, not just based off how it looks, but definitely by the way it tastes.

This is like a little kid when their parents give them wine and they're like, "Oh, I know this is supposed to taste good, but it doesn't."

It's an acquired taste .

I guess I was naive in not knowing what the taste of chocolate was, because the chocolate we know is mixed with vanilla, and cocoa butter, and sugar, and all these great things.

It just shows just how brilliant the chocolatiers of the world are.

Having the more pure chocolate made me realize I'm a basic chocolate lover, and that's okay.

I'm gonna ask you to rest a little piece of chocolate in between your tongue and the roof of your mouth and kind of swish it around your palate like you would do with fine wine.

What? We're getting fancy as hell in this chocolate factory.