A Hot Chocolate Hug, With or Without Snow

The hate came from New Jersey high school football days, when a cup of cocoa at halftime always started with a scalded tongue and ended with a taste reminiscent of brown crayons melted in boiling water.

The love came from my discovery much later of two magical places in Paris: Angelina, on the Right Bank, whose chocolat chaud is dark, elegant and intense, and le Boulanger des Invalides, on the Left Bank, near where I lived, whose chocolat chaud is thick, relaxed and dreamy.

For range, at least, New York’s hot chocolateries far surpass what I found in Paris. Where Angelina serves one classic hot chocolate, in New York you can find the drink in an unbelievable number of shades, fragrances and, yes, spices.

What New York can lack is the French flair for presentation. Too often, even fantastically flavorful hot chocolate is served inelegantly in paper cups with plastic spoons in noisy, cavernous spaces that make you wait in line.

Still, the taste is the thing, and there are some great-tasting cocoas here. One has to be that at Lily O’Brien’s, a Bryant Park cafe that is an outpost of the chocolatier of the same name in County Kildare, Ireland. The chocolate (milk, dark and white) in the basic beverage is Belgian, but look also for the specialty and winter drinks, which combine coffee, chocolate and other flavors.

I took a chance on the Salted Lily, hoping for a taste like that of my favorite Berthillon ice cream, caramel beurre salé. Wow, it sure was, all sweet and salty at once — until I stirred the drink (wooden stirrer, paper cup) and brought all the salt to the top. Lesson: don’t stir.

At Max Brenner, a spacious and busy child-friendly restaurant near Union Square, you can combine one of three chocolates (dark, milk, white) with a serving style (whipped cream, marshmallows, Italian thick, Mexican spicy) to create your own drink in funkily shaped vessels like the “hug mug,” perfect for cradling in chilled winter palms. (And it’s all kosher.)

My thick white hot chocolate was aromatic and smooth, and the dark with marshmallows was tasty and sweet, but the Swiss-style milk hot chocolate, my companion acknowledged, was a little too much like the Swiss Miss she grew up with.

The house specialty of Jacques Torres is spicy hot chocolate, called Wicked, which requires an adventurous palate that can appreciate the kick of chili peppers. (Mine does not.) Another inventive flavor, White Chai, which crosses white chocolate with Indian tea, was a surprisingly well-matched and tangy combination. Orange and peanut butter flavors are also the menu. Cafe tables look onto the chocolate makers in some locations. It’s too bad about the paper cups.

The Italians are no slouches at chocolate, either. They make Nutella, don’t they? And like Nutella, the Gianduja hot chocolate at Otto’s Enoteca Pizzeria is heavy on the hazelnut, which makes for a silky yet not sickly sweet drink. But Otto’s is essentially an Italian restaurant, and the cioccolata calda is found only on the dessert menu. This is appropriate, since my companion found it so rich that she couldn’t finish it, much like her first chocolat chaud at Angelina’s, she said. Otto also gets brownie points for a lovely presentation, with biscotti and whipped cream.

La Maison du Chocolat came pretty close to the Angelina’s experience, with a bubbly dark chocolate (Ecuadorean) so thick that it coats the sides of your cup. A perfect balance between bitter and sweet, it came with a hint of vanilla and proper china, as well as a glass of ice water and a dollop of cream on the side. An even darker Caracas hot chocolate is also available. The ambience is refined, but the package is très cher.

MarieBelle in SoHo is also very Parisian but in a different way: Service was slow, the servings were small and pricey, and the bill came with the tip included. But the taste was out of this world, with a white hot chocolate with vanilla that was buttery, sweet and creamy.

To get to the cozy Cacao Bar in the back, you must walk through the shop up front — that is, if you can pass by the exotic chocolates on display. MarieBelle’s other hot chocolate blends include Aztec, spicy (with chipotle, cinnamon and chili) and milk chocolate with hazelnut.

For creative flavoring, you can’t beat the City Bakery, but only in February, when each day brings a different concoction in the cafe’s annual festival. Consider seriously, however, whether you want to give up the frothy, thick deliciousness of the regular brew, which is served in something more like a bowl than like a cup (although, again, you are stuck with plastic spoons).

This year’s festival offers Darkest Dark Hot Chocolate (on Monday), Beer Hot Chocolate (next Friday) and Chinese Cinnamon Hot Chocolate (Feb. 25), among many others.

O.K., so the Gramercy Tavern is not really a hot chocolate joint. But I just had to try its hot chocolate martini. It’s a winner. The tavern’s regular hot chocolate is blended with Stoli Vanil vodka and amaretto, and poured from a small pitcher into a stemmed glass, making a fabulous almond-accented after-dinner-drink-dessert.

Salted or spiked, and even without the usual bitter chill to escape from, a good, thick, European-style hot chocolate can melt away whatever ails you, if only for the moments it takes to sip and sigh through one.

Where to Find the Dark, the White and the Spicy

CITY BAKERY $5 for a regular cup of hot chocolate; $5.50 for the daily flavor; 3 West 18th Street, Flatiron district; (212) 366-1414, thecitybakery.com.

GRAMERCY TAVERN $14 for a hot chocolate martini; 42 East 20th Street, Flatiron district; (212) 477-0777, gramercytavern.com.

JACQUES TORRES $3.25 and up; various locations; mrchocolate.com.

LA MAISON DU CHOCOLAT $8; various locations; lamaisonduchocolat.com/en.

LILY O’BRIEN’S $4.50 and up; 36 West 40th Street, Manhattan; (212) 575-0631, lilyscafenyc.com.

MARIEBELLE $6 for a small cup; $8 for large; 484 Broome Street, SoHo; (212) 925-6999, mariebelle.com.

MAX BRENNER $5.95; 841 Broadway, between 13th and 14th Streets, near Union Square, East Village; (646) 467-8803, maxbrenner.com.

OTTO’S ENOTECA PIZZERIA $5.50; 1 Fifth Avenue, at Eighth Street, Greenwich Village; (212) 995-9559, ottopizzeria.com.

Chocolate with Bill & Sheila

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