The fourth stop on our guided food tour of Auckland, Honest Chocolat Commercial Bay is the 2nd location of the award winning craft chocolate maker. It's a beautiful store, with a bar area to serve chocolate inspired drinks. They also sell accompaniments like chocolate sauce and caramel, all made in New Zealand.
We got a variety of samples, including 3 different bonbons (salted caramel, passion fruit, and red wine) along with a small cup of the cacao tea. I do understand how a really good chocolate can be accentuated with very different fillings and flavors, and in my case, none of the ones mentioned hit home, even the salted caramel which is one of my favorite ice cream flavors. All were very pleasant to look at, almost too pretty to eat. And I wasn't too sure about the cacao tea, though it was very nice to be offered to go with the bon bons.
Quick note: bonbons - surrounded by tempered chocolate shell, and per French law, must be at least 25% chocolate; truffles (which is what I'm used to in the States: made from ganache (mixture of cream and chocolate), not usually covered by a hard shell; pralines (has a hard, nutty filling). As one can see, some can be a subset of others. read more