The best restaurant in Rio has chocolates for sale in Sao Paulo

The best restaurant in Rio has chocolates for sale in Sao Paulo


The collaboration between Lasai and Mica Crafted Chocolates begins this week with just 100 units

Carrot, red beetroot, corn and cassava. They might be the ingredients of a soup, but they are the protagonists of the chocolates of the best restaurant in Rio de Janeiro (or the 22nd best in Latin America according to 50 Best Restaurants).

Made by the Sao Paulo studio Mica Crafted Chocolates, they take three days to be ready and are on sale from this week, “in a super limited edition”. The warning comes from Michele Kallas, Mica, who has booked one hundred boxes with the four flavors (R$49). Rafa Costa e Silva, chef and owner of the idea, will in turn have one thousand units available which will be received weekly and given away at the end of each meal at Lasai (R$ 1150).

The partnership between the two was not premeditated. Midway through the year Mica went to Rio, at dinner she commented on her chocolates and the sous-chef, Vini Maciel, revealed he was a fan of her chocolates and chips. As a good observer, Rafa recorded everything in his head.




As a result, late last year, he called the chocolate maker asking for some creations to complement his plant-based menu. “The great challenge was always to put a dessert inside a 12 gram candy. Then this came along: use vegetables and not let yourself be overwhelmed by the chocolate”, confesses the expert.

To tell the truth, if we were in a restaurant, we could use fresh vegetables, ice cream and mousse, but inside a bonbon… The solution was to use caramel, oilseeds, ganache and jellies to create textures and flavors that enhance the vegetable and are perceptible to sight and taste.

Despite Rafa’s insistence, there was no way to praise the chayote, nor the yellow beetroot. “The chayote, poor thing, would disappear with any kind of chocolate and the beetroot would oxidize and turn brown, sad,” Mica says.



The quartet of the Mica and Lasai collaboration presents chocolates with carrot, beetroot, corn and cassava PHOTO ALEX SILVA/ESTADAO

The purple one on the other hand was radiant. Its juice gives life to white chocolate ganache and its powder to a chestnut paste (a sort of beetroot “Nutella”). To balance the flavors, a touch of yogurt enters the recipe.

Away from the chips, the version with cassava chips also didn’t turn out as Vini had dreamed. However, the tuber has become a crunchy delight that accompanies the bananas in the ganache and caramel. The colored carrots also failed the tests, but the orange ones colored a thick jelly and a ganache that topped the marzipan with candied orange peel.

To conclude the quartet, a bonbon pays homage to an iconic dessert from Le Bernardin, Éric Ripert’s three-star restaurant in New York: “There they use sweet corn and blueberry. Here, we opted for freeze-dried green corn puree to get closer to the flavor and texture of the tamale. On the contrary, the jaboticaba gel, which is a more acidic and exotic fruit”, explains Mica.

Artisan Chocolates in Mica

R. Artur de Azevedo, 1199, Pinheiros. from Monday to Saturday, from 9:00 to 19:00; Sun., from 12:00 to 19:00. Tel: (11) 97620-0210

Source: Terra

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