Chocolate Chamber

 Indulging in ASINfully chocolate meal

By Earl D.C. Bracamonte

On a recent trip to Bohol, we savored an entire meal with dishes utilizing chocolate as an ingredient. We visited The Chocokate Chamber that was founded by Tablea Queen,  Raquel Choa. 

For starters, we partook of Sikwate, the unsweetened hot chocolate made from premium tablea. It was imperative that we start with this bitter beverage so we can, later, appreciate the dishes when flavors were added.

"You need to savor it with the 5 S: You first swirl the contents of your cup before smelling it. Then sip it and swish - let it linger a little while in your palate - then swallow! Enzymes in the saliva breaks down the flavors of the pure chocolate drink, aiding in digestion. Actual cocoa butter melts in body temperature," shared dietician Hannah Choa, fifth sibling of Raquel Choa's brood of eight. Raquel has earned the epithet, "Tablea Queen," for elevating cocoa into a sought-after commodity than it was before.

We continued our meal with Tablea Mushroom Soup, a creamy and chocklatey soup grated with Cacao de Bola and asin-tibuok (whole rock salt), paired with tablea pan de sal and tablea chocolate peanut butter. And when you stir your soup, you'll find a chocolate truffle nestled therein. It's a tasty melange of salty and sweet.

This was followed by the Grilled Sausage & Margherita Chocolate Pizza, a chocolate-infused dough, spread with mole - a Mexican paste with a dozen distinct ingredients with chocolate as its key element; topped with Sausage or tomato and mozzarella, and sprinkled with cacao nibs, and grated with Cacao de Bola. The paste also uses three types of pepper: labuyo, espada, and bell peppers. The pizza is baked with cocoa oil.

Our pasta dish, Spaghetti Mole, is filled with grilled Sausage tossed with mole, a Mexican paste with a dozen distinct ingredients and drizzled with cacao-infused oil.

For sweet endings, we were proffered with Puto Sikwate, that's glutinous rice streamed in coconut milk, added with a hint of ginger and topped with mango jam; plus muscovado sugar siding to sweeten and paired with unsweetened sikwate made from premium tablea.

We closed our sumptuous meal with Chilled Salted Caramel, a sweetened tablea cacao powder flavored with salted caramel and grated with asin-tibuok.

"La Factoria is our chocolate factory that makes our chocolate products. The Chocolate Chamber has branches in Cebu, Bohol, and soon in Singapore. We prepare our dishes with the ingredients we find where our outlets are, so our menus are different in every location," shared Hannah, at the close of our intimate dinner at their branch in Panglao Island.