Step through the door of My Sugar in Sea Point’s Regent Road and your senses will go into overdrive at the display trays stacked high with chocolates in all shapes and sizes. Choose from a hundred different taste journeys: each one a work of art. This is a café with a difference – order your coffee from the barista and then take on the herculean task of choosing a few individual chocolates to adorn your plate.
Living the dream
This chocolate café is a long-time dream of chocolatier Kaylah Greenberg. “We wanted to make great chocolate accessible and fun again. Most chocolate shops have stayed very traditional and we wanted to turn that on its head,” she says. Together with partner Asher Isaacs, a chef with several years at La Colombe under his belt, she has certainly brought the fun back into chocolate and the quirkiest creations are already favourites with the wide variety of regulars popping in to My Sugar for a hit of chocolate cheer. “One of our stars is the Caramello-Buddha, a milk chocolate Buddha filled with miso caramel and crushed peanuts. Our Old Man Jacks have also been a hit – Jack Daniels bourbon ganache and tobacco caramel encased in a dark chocolate skull.”
Flavours and fun
Kaylah uses very little added sugar in her fillings, and the fruit centres retain their natural acidity. There’s a subtlety to all the flavours: in the golden chocolate Buddhas, the miso is complementary rather than overpowering, and deeply satisfying to the foodie palate. I particularly enjoyed the Dark Salt Teardrops, the salt bringing out the richness of the chocolate without screaming for attention itself. Kaylah is constantly experimenting with flavour combinations so there is always something new to try. “Our recent flavour creations are hazelnut and coriander, popping candy and champagne, and a very small dark chocolate shell filled with 100% cocoa mass: a really cool experiment for customers to see where chocolate comes from.”
Then there are the luscious new cake jars for those in a dessert frame of mind, and a new range of maltitol-sweetened chocolates suitable for diabetics. Be sure to take home some of the salty sweet pretzel bark (their bestseller): crunchy pretzels, gooey caramel and Maldon sea salt in milk or dark chocolate. Yum!
Taste for yourself:
My Sugar
021 433 2335
Words: Kit Heathcock
Images: Clare Williams
