sometimes a little chocolate just isn't enough...

[from Daily Candy]
July 31, 2006
The Chocolate Manifesto
Bored with stuffy old chocolate shops and all the white-glove pomp and circumstance that goes along with them? Wish that Marie Antoinette behind the counter there would stop doling out tiny samples and just let you eat cake?
Attention, citizens! A sweet revolution is taking place at Max Brenner, Chocolate by the Bald Man — Union Square’s 5,000-square-foot cocoa utopia. Here, patrician and plebeian, bourgeois and proletariat alike have access to such wonders as the Magnet (a chocolate egg passed from mouth to mouth); popsicle fondue; cigarette-like boxes (packed with dark chocolate thins); and handfuls, vials, and pounds of chocolate powders, liquids, and bricks. There is equal obligation for all to taste the molten cake, chocolate granitas, choctails, chocolate breakfast foods, and shots of warm truffle cream with grown-up Pop Rocks.A smaller satellite shop is set to open in the East Village next month, thereby abolishing the distinction between the haves and have-nots. That’s bringing chocolate to the people. Max Brenner, Chocolate by the Bald Man, 841 Broadway, between 13th and 14th Streets (212-388-0030 or maxbrenner.com