If you follow local restaurant news, you've known for many months that Max Brenner was planning to open a Boston location. Having been to the location in New York City several times, I could not have been more excited!
For those who are not familiar, Max Brenner, also known as "the bald man," has created a restaurant and gift shop concept that centers around chocolate. It's a bit like Wonkaland, only it's a chocolate-specific utopia.
Tonight I met two friends for dinner (and of course dessert) at the newly opened Boylston Street location. We were seated at a great booth in the center of the restaurant. From our seats we could see all the cool, chocolate inspired art work as well as an entire wall decorated with beakers full of chocolate!
We decided to skip appetizers because we wanted to save our calories for dessert so we each ordered an entree. I decided on the Southwestern Caesar Salad which had a creamy, chili dressing with an awesome kick. It was the perfect amount of dressing, a healthy portion of lettuce, tomato, avocado, grated cheese and of course, croutons! I loved this twist on a classic salad.
One of the girls ordered the Salmon Sandwich which was a fried piece of salmon, caramelized onion, lettuce, tomato and spicy roasted pepper aioli. She raved about the caramelized onion and the aioli.
The last entree sampled was the Margarita Panini which came served in three, narrow, mini sandwiches. It tasted like a folded piece of margarita pizza!
Both sandwiches came with chili and cocoa dusted waffle fries, a delicious dipping sauce and two pickle spears.
Then we moved onto the main attraction, dessert! There were several categories of treats but we decided to rule out anything "common" or that we could get somewhere else. So that eliminated the milkshakes, the cookies and the fondue. We ultimately decided on two sinful selections.
First we had the "Max-wich" which is dark chocolate truffle ice cream sandwiched between two chocolate cookies and served with dark chocolate ganache for dipping. Yum to the max! Pun intended.
We also boldly tried the Chocolate Chunks Pizza which had melted chocolate, hazelnuts, bananas, marshmallows and peanutbutter. Do you feel sick just reading that? The pizza was so sweet you could only take two or three bites! Also, the crust on the pizza was hard to cut, making it less enjoyable. We all agreed it would have been better with a graham cracker crust or a crepe crust.
Once we had slipped into a complete chocolate coma, our waitress brought our check in an adorable tin box that read, "Money for life, Chocolate for the soul." Amen!
As we walked out I couldn't help but notice all of the large parties seated around the restaurant. Max Brenner would definitely be a great place for a birthday celebration, especially for someone with a supreme sweet tooth.
Though Max Brenner is centered around the chocolate creations, the savory food is actually quite superb! Don't underestimate the non-chocolate items.
Be sure visit Max Brenner at it's new location, 745 Boylston Street in Back Bay.
