Chocolate

Chocolate is the food of love:

* Troquet: Try chef Tim Goodell’s dazzling chocolate mille feuille: thin layers of filo dough are rolled in Valrhona cocoa, then stacked with bittersweet chocolate pastry cream and unsweetened whipped cream and served with a haunting dark chocolate sorbet. There’s also a chocolate mousse cake, a hot Valrhona chocolate souffle cake and dreamy Valrhona chocolate chip cookies served with milk. (Chocolate desserts, $6.50 to $7.50.) Troquet, South Coast Plaza, 3333 Bristol, Costa Mesa, (714) 708-6865.

* Tahiti: At Tony DiLembo’s new restaurant, the hot Valrhona chocolate pudding cake is baked to order and served with Tahitian vanilla sauce. (Chocolate pudding cake, $5.50.) Tahiti, 7910 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, (213) 651-1213.

* Splash: Chef Serge Burckel serves Euro-Cal-Asian (also known as fusion) cuisine, which in the idiom of chocolate means Crispy Chocolate Dim Sum--squares of filo dough filled with dark chocolate, then rolled in black and white sesame seeds and powdered sugar, fried for crispness and served with both a raspberry and a spicy vanilla dipping sauce. Pure heaven! (Chocolate dim sum, $7.95.) Splash, Crowne Plaza Hotel, 350 N. Harbor Drive, Redondo Beach, (310) 798-5348.

* Devon: Pastry chef Jeffrey Johnson offers his intense dark chocolate pudding cake, a delicate cake, soft in the center, that’s served unmolded and warm with a true mocha walnut custard sauce and exquisite candied Chinese walnut halves. (Chocolate pudding cake, $7.) Restaurant Devon, 109 E. Lemon Ave., Monrovia, (818) 305-0013.

* Gardens: Pastry chef Donald Wressel is making a warm bittersweet chocolate pudding with bittersweet chocolate ice cream and a rich “Grandma’s cake” with bittersweet chocolate layers and sour cream frosting. (Chocolate desserts, $8.50 to $9.50.) Gardens at the Four Seasons, 300 S. Doheny Drive, Los Angeles, (310) 273-2222.

* Fonz’s Steak and Seafood: At this new restaurant, the talented Russell Jackson makes a chocolate brownie pie that really delivers the goods. (Chocolate brownie pie, $5.) Fonz’s Steak and Seafood, 1017 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, (310) 376-1536.

* Spago Beverly Hills: For 10 years, pastry chef Sherry Yard has been trying to perfect her chocolate sauce--it’s 99% there, she says. Judge for yourself when ordering the profiteroles; the sauce is beautifully shiny, clings just right to the Calvados ice cream-filled pastries and has that great echoing depth of chocolate flavor that comes only with a decade of refinement. There’s also a Deep Dark Chocolate and Whiskey Torte and the Majari Chocolate and Caramel Bombe. (Desserts, $8.50 to $9.) Spago Beverly Hills, 176 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 385-0880.