And where better to indulge your sweet tooth than a factory attached to a casual dining café. Let your senses be overwhelmed…

The moment you step into Colocal, all your childhood dreams of a chocolate factory gets shattered (thanks to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Instead, you are greeted by a more neat, practical machinery, the heady smell of which will leave you drooling for some dark chocolate.

A new addition to Dhan Mill in the Capital, Colocal is an artisanal chocolate brand with a flagship chocolate factory and casual dining cafe. A first of its kind in the city, they make their own handcrafted dark chocolates with pure cacao, cocoa butter, and raw cane sugar. They also make their own bread, which is available in a varied menu at their café.

Spread across quite a huge space, the café offers both indoor and outdoor seating, with the factory on the floor above it. The grand property stands out with its picture-perfect bright white and yellow walls, majestic pillars, and a vast variety of plants – making it a cafe straight out of Pondicherry. 

We started off with a tour of the factory. From the roasting room where they roast cacao beans from Kerala, to the tempering room, the rich smell of molten chocolate is almost intoxicating. Done with the tour, we came down to taste some of their homegrown variants of dark chocolates, with 66, 72 and 85% of chocolate respectively. Needless to say, its every chocolate-lovers heaven. 

With all that sweetness we started craving for something savoury. The café offers a wide variety of both beverages and food. Ditching the usual potato fries we decided to go ahead and try their zucchini fries. And to our surprise, it tasted as good as the all-time favourite potato fries. With a crunchy outer coating and served with mayo and ketchup this one is a healthy alternative to regular fries. 

As the sun started to go down, and the weather even more chilly, we ordered for some Colocal Campfire Hot Chocolate. Made with their in-house chocolates, this one has 54% of chocolate and is served interestingly with smoke coming out of your glass. The thick gooey chocolate is just the one you have been looking for in a winter afternoon. One can almost establish this one as a dessert. 

While this place is all about chocolate, they also serve the finest coffee and just one tea. Their Cacao Husk Tea, is made of the husk of cacao seeds that are roasted in their factory. This one is a little bitter but gives you a welcoming change from all that sweet chocolate. 

As they bake their own bread, we decided to taste their buns and ordered the Cheese Pepperoni Buns. Cut in half, the bread is toasty and slathered with cheese and bits of garlic along with pepperoni. A must-have, complementing the hot chocolate. 

We were recommended to try their freshly baked sourdough pizza and we went with their Garlic Prawn Spinach Pizza. This, however, wasn’t to our satisfaction. The prawns and the sauce of the pizza didn’t quite go well with each other. 

Making up for this lapse in judgement was Chicken and Spinach Tortellini with Napoli Sauce. The pasta was well stuffed and the sauce was a little tangy, yet not overpowering the taste of the Tortellini. 

By then we had already finished our hot chocolate and decided to order one of their special roasted coffees. Sourced from their own sister brand Roastery Coffee House based out of Hyderabad, one can enjoy a range of specialty coffee. We went with the Sea Salt Mocha. This one’s for those who like their coffee strong. The saltiness cuts down on the sweetness of the coffee, making it a very balanced drink.

Filled to the brim, we ended our evening with their Basque Cheesecake. We had our eyes on this one from the moment we stepped down from the factory. This one was as cheesy as one could get, the burnt sides making it even better. 

This new addition to the Capital is truly a blessing during the winters.

Review done on invitation

Address: The Dhan Mill compound, Chhatarpur, New Delhi