Chocolate : Coffee That Melts in Your Mouth

Richard H. Donnelly Fine Chocolates

1509 Mission St.

Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060

(408) 458-4214

MasterCard, Visa “As a kid I didn’t like chocolate,” says Richard Donnelly. Things change; now he often eats a quarter pound a day.

“I went to Europe,” he explains. “It was there I realized I didn’t like American chocolate.” At the time Donnelly was a pastry chef, but he apprenticed with several prominent European chocolatiers (including France’s famous trufflemaker, Robert Linxe) and came back to open his own chocolate shop in Santa Cruz.

For the past five years Donnelly has operated a one-man chocolate factory, turning out 10,000 pounds of chocolate a year. One of his best-sellers are the rich chocolate espresso bars he handcrafts from top-quality French bittersweet chocolate and freshly ground coffee beans. Although he makes the bars for several California coffee shops to sell under their own label (the coffee shops supply their own blend of coffee), Donnelly also sells a house label coffee-chocolate bar. The intense bars come in both dark and milk-chocolate versions. Four foil-wrapped 2.2-ounce bars cost $11, plus $5 shipping for the first pound.