PlanJam!From your screen to the scene

When married entrepreneurs Liat Cohen and Yaniv Reeis opened their tiny storefront in Park Slope, a neighborhood known for overpriced restaurants and stiff competition for fledgling businesses, the odds were against them. The neighborhood was already home to several successful cafés, including Tea Lounge, Ozzie’s, and Gorilla Coffee. And although nowadays you can’t throw a bagel in this town without hitting a gourmet chocolaterie, a few years ago, the concept of a chocolate bar was a tad alien to most people. Cocoa Bar, with its triple focus on chocolate, wine, and coffee, didn’t seem to fit into a category. Was it a bar? A café? A bakery?

In the end, Cohen and Reeis’ gamble paid off, in the form of a lasting business and brand name, which appears on packaged treats and gifts available for sale in the store. Cocoa Bar’s theme keeps the menu necessarily simple, with hot and cold coffee and chocolate beverages joining a respectable wine list, all of which serves to complement the main event: chocolate. Chocolate is celebrated in all its forms here, from gourmet truffles and bonbons (made specially for Cohen and Reeis by a local chocolatier) to a dizzying variety of decadent baked goods (provided by 9 local bakeries, at last count).

I took one of my girlfriends along on my trip to Cocoa Bar, and the first thing we noticed was the diminutive size of the place. The narrow nature of the brownstone location necessitates two seating areas at either end of the long counter. The back area features comfy couches and a bookshelf full of dog-eared volumes, but as we showed up during the pre-dinner hours, the laptop crowd had already laid dominion over the couches. This is my biggest pet peeve when it comes to cafés. You want to talk and laugh and have a good time, but there’s always some egghead glaring at you over his horn-rimmed glasses as he tries in vain to finish his thesis.

We took a seat by the window and dug into our desserts. The Red Velvet Cake was impossibly moist and cinnamony, and went perfectly with the house Merlot I washed it down with. My friend opted for a mini Chocolate Raspberry Torte, which was rich and satisfying, and paired with the house blend of French Roast coffee, made for a perfect afternoon bite. The owners warn on their website that their offerings release endorphins that make you giddy, and I don’t know if it was the chocolate or the Merlot, but I certainly felt a little lighter coming out of Cocoa Bar than I did coming in.

P.S. Chocoholics who don’t want to make the journey out to Park Slope can get their fix at Cocoa Bar’s new Manhattan location at 21 Clinton Street in the Lower East Side.