Looking for something special to do this Friday?

This Friday, October 2nd from 9:00-1:00, please take the time to visit our Danville store. It is another Free Massage Friday in Danville and we would like to treat everyone.

Leilani and Jessica from D'Jour Massage Thereapy will be there again to help improve your day. Their talent in massage is not equaled and I know I am looking forward to the opportunity to start my weekend off right.

Great Coffee, Amazing Chocolate, and a Relaxing Massage to boot! Stop by the Danville Bittersweet this Friday to take advantage of our hospitality.

See ya there!

Out & About Rockridge - This Weekend!

This Sunday, September 27th, College Avenue will be closed to traffic while we celebrate Out & About Rockridge! Bittersweet will be open and ready to supply you with all your chocolate, coffee, and milkshake needs for the day. Enjoy the fashion show, food, and games along College Avenue and then swing by Bittersweet for a real treat.

Last Hot September Night - Tonight!

It's the last one! Stop in tonight from 6-9 PM for 20% off drinks!

It just won't be the same without you!

Chocolate Club to start....

Bittersweet Cafe is finally getting their own Chocolate Club. We will have our first meeting in October. More information will follow, but keep it in the notes on your calendar. There will only be a select number of memberships available, so keep an eye out for more news to come.....

TCHO is Here!

It has been a long wait, but we finally have TCHO on our shelves!

TCHO is a local chocolate company out of San Francisco. They are free trade and doing some really great things. The following is a piece of their story:

"It’s a story of hunting down flavor itself. Sourcing beans after jolting rides by Sourcing Director John Kehoe up-country in Peru. Or personally selected by our co-founder in Ghana. Or from the plantation of a friend in Madagascar. Then cut tested, roast-tested, and melanged in hundreds more tests before a particular lot was even accepted. Then enumerable formulation trials begin, including sugar tests, to even get the earliest 0.1 Beta to put out a bar to tasters. Moving to factory production, large-scale bean batches are roasted to lab-determined profiles, then ground, refined, and conched as they are heated and cooled at specific intervals; and finally the chocolate is tempered to perfection. Behind it all: Chief Chocolate Officer Timothy Child’s genetically-blessed mouth and its over-abundance of taste buds obsessively searching for peak flavor.

1.0 is also a story of reimagining what it means to taste chocolate. The wine conventions currently used, like varietal, origin, and percentage, can be misleading — the same varietal, for example, grown on the same farm in the same growing region can taste radically different depending on the season, how the beans were fermented, or how they were dried. We suggest there’s a better way to discover your chocolate — namely the flavors that are inherent in cacao. Our flavor wheel is our attempt to make chocolate that is the purest expression of the flavors inherent in cacao, in this case, so far, “Chocolatey”, “Fruity”, “Nutty”, and “Citrus.”

"Much like our counterparts in the California wine community revolutionized the industry, TCHOSource works with farmers and cooperatives to improve fermentation and bean drying methods, which is where making good chocolate actually starts—in the field. TCHOSource also partners with leading research organizations in cacao producing countries to deploy “Flavor Labs,” allowing farmers to make small batches of chocolate with their own cacao beans to better understand the core principle of TCHO chocolate: flavor."

We are carrying their four 1.0 dark chocolate bars: Fruity, Nutty, Citrus, and Chocolatey. All four bars run around 70% Cacao. My favorite of the bunch is the Fruity.

Stop in and find out which is your favorite and help support another local company.

Another Mention in the Paper.....

If you remember when I first started blogging and wrote about the Amadei Porcelana Bar and it's mention on NBC's "30 Rock", well it has brought us even more fame.

The Examiner's, Oakland Food Editor, Lisa Cecconi, has explored the idea of the most expensive chocolate in the world. Discover her thoughts in this recent article.

Then stop by Bittersweet Cafe and see if it is worth it for yourself. I think it is. Life is too short for cheap chocolate.

New Item On The Weekends!

We started a little experiment last weekend, and it worked!

Bittersweet Rockridge will once again be baking it's own bread pudding Saturday and Sunday mornings. There will only be one pan available each day, so servings will last until we sell out. Hot from the oven each weekend day when we open, there is nothing like it. Chock full of wonderful ingredients like pecans, coconut, chocolate (of course), and lovely croissants, it is absolutely amazing.

Make Bittersweet your weekend tradition with fresh baked, housemade, bread pudding. Don't forget the whipped cream or vanilla ice cream on top.

Coming Oct. 5th, New Hours!

Due to high volume and demand we will be opening an hour earlier during the week beginning October 5th. We are happy to be serving you great coffee and chocolate an hour earlier.

New Hours: (As of October 5th, 2009)

Sunday: 9:00-7:00 PM
Monday-Wednesday: 8:00-7:00 PM
Thursday-Friday: 8:00-9:00 PM
Saturday: 9:00-9:00 PM

Thank you for making Bittersweet Cafe a wonderful experience and place to be.

Tonight - Hot September Nights!

Every Thursday Night in September, Bittersweet Cafe is Hot!

From 6:00-9:00 PM tonight Receive 20% Off Drinks.

Celebrate the coming of Fall, the kids being back in school, life, and chocolate on Thursday Nights.

See ya here.