ChocoLee Chocolates

This is based on just trying to get in touch with them. We bought a living social coupon and we planned on making a reservation. Website says to reserve via email, which I did. It is extremely hard to get any sort of responses from them
April 2 — sent email to make reservation
April 7 — still have not heard back, sent another email, and left a message on the phone
April 8 — Finally got response saying that they are booked till may.
April 8 — replied with another date in may
April 14 — still have not heard back, sent another email
April 16 — still have not heard back, called and left a message.
The class could be great, but I would not know, how do you maintain your business if you are only open thurs-​sun, and never return your messages or reply to potential customers emails. If we have not just spent 40 $ per person on the living social, we probably would have just given up.

I was planning a private truffle making event for some clients and me for today. I reached out to the owner multiple times over the past week to confirm the event and did not hear back from here until this morning at 6AM. This event was supposed to take place this evening. The owner informed me that she sold the event to another group.
I find it very unprofessional that the owner did not communicate with me over the past week and that she decided to sell the evening to another group without even telling me.
I would not recommend doing business with this company as the lack of communication on the owners part makes it very difficult to plan. Now I have to find alternate plans for a group of clients on short notice as the owner decided she didn’t want to communicate.
Note — I have not tried to actual chocolates so I cannot give a review on the shop. My review relates only to the private truffle making event that I was trying to schedule.

My partner in crime and I took the truffle making class here. It was fun, informative, and delicious… a perfect anniversary present to ourselves.
You go home with a big box of truffles, two if you bring a friend!
The instructor is great at answering questions and giving recommendations for where to buy ingredients to make your own at home. Try this out if you get a chance! Perfect for any kind of date!

I stopped by during their open hours (Friday around 3:30 or 4pm) and they weren’t open.

If you are a chocolate addict, a visit to ChocoLee Chocolates is in order!
This quaint sweet shoppe is located in the heart of the South End, tucked away amongst the brownstones and brick sidewalks. The exterior elicits images of Parisian chocolatiers, with fresh flowers overhanging an entryway of weathered wood and glass. The interior is quite small but is filled with French-​style artwork and brimming with chocolates, truffles, pastries, and other confectionary treats.
Special treats that stood out were dark chocolate with bourbon cherry and honey filling, and the dark chocolate with chocolate ganache and candied ginger. They also sell a chocolate bark called kapinziner which was a tasty combination of dark chocolate and almonds and looked truly unique. I absolutely LOVE dark chocolate and ChocoLee didn’t seem to be in short supply.
My personal favorite were the beignets, which seem to be all the rage lately when it comes to cooking shows and offerings at similar places. These deep-​fried delights were a crunchy and savory mix of pastry and chocolate and were pretty awesome. For those not quite the chocolate fiend, they have French croissants which make a good breakfast to go.
I’ve also heard they offer cooking classes to learn how to make truffles! I’m sure there are some deals out there on LivingSocial or Groupon and I am definitely on the look-​out for those.
All in all, if you are wandering around the South End and have a sweet tooth, definitely make a stop at ChocoLee to get your fix and be transported to old-​world France. Bön appetit!

Took a course here last year through LivingSoxial. The storefront is REALLY tiny, but the back opens up to a soup kitchen area with more seating. Such a fun event and the instructors were super helpful. Left with quite a bit of chocolate, too!

I surprised my Mom and took her for a class here. We had an AMAZING time! Lee was so much fun in class, very knowledgeable and made everything easy.
My sister and her friend would like to go and I think I may just join them. It definitely helps that I walked out with nearly 20 delicious truffles. Worth every penny to take the class.
We also purchased few of their beautifully perfect truffles on the way out– the dulce de leche and coconut cream were to die for!

When I was a member at Healthworks in Back Bay, I used to come to ChocoLee some Saturdays after working out. Because nothing tops off a workout better than chocolate beignets or a Nutella-​filled pastry. Now that I no longer belong to that gym, I haven’t been to ChocoLee in a while, but now that I’ve realized my mistake I hope to rectify it. The store is really tiny (like «2 customers at a time» tiny), but the people working here are really friendly and the food is delicious. The truffles are beautiful, but a tad bit expensive for me. I think I’ll be sticking with the pastries for my future visits. Just make sure to stack up on napkins when you come because as you can imagine, when your pastry is oozing with chocolate, it can get a little messy.

I heard about this place through a Living Social deal for their truffle making class. It’s true that you have to book waaaayyyyy in advance because the classes fill up so quickly! Patience is a good skill and there is usually a pay off. In our case, we loved the class and learned alot to boot. I never realized how easy it was to make chocolate truffles. You don’t need fancy tools or a convection oven or anything like that. I’m sure I could make these truffles again from home now that I know how.
It’s true that sharing food and a cooking space with a bunch of strangers is kind of icky. One women in my group walked around eating truffles off of everyone elses tray and a few times tried to hand feed me pieces of her half-​eated truffles which was strange to say the least. There were also kids in my group who walked around sprinkling edible decorating dust on EVERYTHING. But dealing with the public is also a skill that deserves to be strengthened through experiences like these.
Ultimately, you don’t come to a class like this for the candy, you come for the skill. I totally feel like I’ve accomplished this skill gaining part of the experience. Even my husband is saying he wants to start making batches of truffles. That’s dedication.

ChocoLee Chocolates is absolutely precious. We just happened to be strolling through this neighborhood after brunch, and there it was — an adorable chocolate shop open on Easter Sunday. We popped in for a look, and walked out with mouths full of chocolates.
Lee, the owner and chocolatier, was a pleasure to meet and chat with. Her assortment of truffles were not only beautiful, but unusual — lavender, rose, salted caramel, dulce de leche, and dark chocolate chocolate. There were a few boozy ones mixed in there, too but we went for the flowery ones. She also had some incredibly decadent-​looking cupcakes, brownies and a variety of other chocolaty goodness, but we went for the truffles.
The chocolate is superb — smooth, rich, deep and bold. The flavors were subtle and pure, especially the rose concoction — it was so delicate and lovely, I took plenty of time eating it. My other favorite was the dulce de leche, which was full of amazing gooey flavor and definitely worth purchasing multiples of.
Don’t miss out — this chocolate shop may be wee, but it’s full of big flavor.

I took a chocolate making class here with the wife and kids. Lee made the reservations process easy with good email communications.
The kitchen is set up well and the quality of the ingredients and instruction were great. She put us all to work and in the end we took home many delicious truffles. Some were beautiful and some were ugly based on the skills of the amateur class members. I like the dark chocolate ones.
The class is kid friendly and I would recommend it.

I got excited about a truffle making class and bought it twice via Living Social. The first one was about to expire, so I scheduled a class for my niece and me to attend. Chocolee was very accommodating about the class scheduling.
Please bare in mind that the truffle making is held at a soup kitchen, so don’t be surprised when you get there. We were. And our first impression was not the best. But then Lee started the class and we loved it. She’s been in the business for 30 years and it shows. The class was hands on, there was work for everyone. We scooped, rolled and decorated truffles and had a great time.
There were lots of people and sometimes it was hard to see what was being demonstrated. Anyway, I really enjoyed the class. It was worth the Living Social deal.

Took a truffle making class with the hubby and had fun and took chocolate home! We got a living social deal for the class ages ago but wasn’t able to book an appointment for Saturday until December.
Con:
The class size was about 20 – 25 people which was too crowded. You couldn’t really do more than one task the entire time because of the limited space in the kitchen and that was disappointing.
Pro:
— A box of truffles to take home which were all amazing. Some didn’t look as pretty as others but as we know, taste is more important!
— Lee was really knowledgeable and helpful.
–Fun to get your hands dirty and
Would I do this again? Probably not but it was a good onetime experience.

OK, so their chocolates are no where as beautiful as the disgustingly expensive places I visited in Paris… But you know what? You DONT KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN MISSING! They make pastries on weekends, and on our stop for our chocolate tour, that little devil made us a chocolate filled beignet that should put that woman behind bars and throw away the KEY! We sampled some of her confections, and I can’t wait to come back!!! Oh, did I mention that she puts mascarpone cheese in the batter… BAD, BAD PASTRY CHEF! :-)

Check out the filtered reviews, poor unwary customer. Unilocal has all the negative reviews filtered out (suspicious, methinks). Anyway, completely bad experience with this business trying to schedule a chocolate making class. My boyfriend gifted me a living social voucher last fall-​Oct 2011. To this date-​Sep 2012, this business has been unable to schedule me a class. Scam? Maybe/​Maybe not. Maybe they were just overwhelmed with customers. But if you couldn’t handle the large volume of customers, why then put a living social deal online? So… judge for yourself and be careful with any offers this business has to offer.
UPDATE: As of 09/​26/​2012, I see yet another living social deal for a chocolate making class. I think they are just taking the money from all the living social deals and not scheduling classes. I talked to the living social customer service and apparently they have faced this kind of problem with this particular business. BEWARE OF ONLINE DEALS WITH THIS BUSINESS!

This review is for the truffle chocolate making class only.
Let me start off by saying that Lee is amazing. She really does seem to know her craft, and is excited to teach us about it. And she seems like a good person. I really don’t have anything against her.
However, I do not think that this 2 hour class is worth the money. My friend and I bought the living social deal for $ 30, and another friend bought it for $ 60. RIPOFF.
Among many reasons, there were two things that really made me regret signing up for the class.
1) The class is in a small community soup kitchen made for about 10 – 15 people. There were over 30 people in the class. It was so obvious that the class was taught for profits.
Think about a college laboratory class. When there are only 20 work benches, will the school registrar allow 40 students to sign up? Of course not! I Why? Because making a class larger than the room is equipped for takes away from the learning experience of everyone.
And because there were more people than the kitchen could support, all of the chocolate making tasks were split. I felt especially bad for the people chopping chocolate. They paid 60 $, to ‘learn’ how to chop chocolate.
I hope that in the future, the class size is reduced so that everyone has a chance to learn and practice each step of this process.
2) I probably will never eat truffles again. Unless they are made at a factory. I did not know that ganache was scooped, then rolled with the palm of your hands. WHY AREN’T GLOVES USED?
Being a germ-​a-​phobe, I do not like touching food with my bare hands, and I really REALLY do not like strangers (who aren’t professional chefs) touching my food. I was disgusted watching everyone get their hands dirty with the chocolate, and licking, and touching, and scooping… …vomit.
So I did my best to scoop, roll, and decorate separately, but because there were so many people, someone always ended up contaminating the ones I tried so hard to isolate. And in the end, my pieces were immediately snagged. I even overheard other students plotting to take mine home.
I did not take a box home like they advertised I could.
I also don’t think I learned much. Everything could’ve been learned through an online recipe. Perhaps the class was purposed to let us practice… But then again, it’d be cheaper to buy the ingredients and practice at home.
So if you don’t have youtube, and like getting your chocolates fused with dead skin cells, this is the class for you! Highly, highly recommend it.

Holy F**K, get the chocolate filled beignets before you die. You can probably only have one order of them before catching the sugar diabetes, but it will be worth it.
This experience with beignets was what I have been looking for every time I’ve ever ordered a beignet to this point. And I will never be the same.
The shop is so cute and tiny! There is room enough for 2 of you to point excitedly at the chocolates you want and for one additional person to make your beingets. Also when you go to get them, don’t wear white. You’ll see why.

Kara G insisted their weekend, time-​restricted, fried dough of the gods was real. After three fly-​by attempts, I was convinced this place was never open, let alone sizzling up little choconuggets.
«It’s real, I swear.»
«Sure, Kara. Sure.»
«I’m serious! They have chocolate filled beignets»
«Right. Let’s go get crispy pig tails or, yknow, something else you can actually order.»
But this past Sunday, we found the wee corner shoppe had flipped its sign to Open and therefore wasted no time swinging that puppy ajar. Inside, we saw Euro-​posters promoting Chocolat much as they would Martini & Rossi or Le Chat Noir, a display case with a well-​raided supply of truffles and… that’s about it. No seating, no tables, no shirt no shoes no problem. Grab and go, if ya know what I mean.
Oh, and a fryer! A wad of dark chocolate ganache is battered and fried to golden perfection, then dusted in powdered sugar, and all for a paltry $ 2.50. But you don’t want just one, do you? Of course not. Buy three, and you save 50c. Economy!
We ate ‘em hot and, holy hell, they delivered everything you’d expect — dense sweetness, an airy fry and alkaline cocoa love. Find out whatever time these bad boys are served and be there for the madness. It’s a must try.
For the hyped chocolate-​raspberry croissant, there was a strong like, but no love. Tender and flaky, while boasting a very fresh raspberry filling, the pastry may have been a bit over-​baked as the bitter carbonization purveyed throughout the puff.
It’s an adorable front, and the folks behind the counter are sweeter than the treats. Better cut this review short, so it can actually fit in Chocolee’s retail space!

Very cute and cozy shop, the pastries looked tasty. Perhaps I’m spoiled as my partner makes chocolates too, but I found the chocolate was somewhat bland and the truffles I bought were riddled with air bubbles. But the owner was really nice and I liked the vibe of the establishment so felt three stars were warranted even though the chocolate wasn’t totally up to snuff.

I love you, Lee.
You must make it into ChocoLee on a weekend and get an order of the fresh chocolate beignets. They are just heaven.
The almond croissants are also good. I’d suggest asking for a little drizzle of chocolate on top :)
I signed up my mom and myself for a chocolate making class in a few weeks. We’re so excited! I’ll definitely have to update afterwards.