The best hot chocolate ever. If you know the recipe for Slovakian hot chocolate, please share!

German chocolate, Dutch chocolate, Swiss Chocolate and the top-of-the-world fabulous chocolate caramels served up at the little-heralded Chocolat shop at 703 Fort Street in Victoria, British Columbia – these are few of my favorite things.

After swooning to the wonders of German chocolate, I was not expecting to find anything comparable in Europe, much less Slovakia, but it turns out I was wrong about that.

Seated in the snug Cukraren na Korze in Bratislava’s historic district, we devoured the best chocolate ever. I use the word “devoured,” but it could just as easily be said that we sipped on it. The chocolate was a hot chocolate beverage topped in genuine whipped cream, and while many have used the term “you could stand a spoon up in it,” only as a descriptive for richness, Cukraren’s hot chocolate really can support a spoon.

It raises the question: Is it hot chocolate? Or pudding? I don’t know. I don’t care. I just love it. I’ve been trying to figure out the recipe all this month, but so far it eludes me.

My father was Slovakian by birth, and he went to school in Bratislava, but of all the great food he put on the table, he never produced a cup of hot chocolate like this. I think he knew I had a weakness, and that bringing Bratislava’s hot chocolate too early into my life could lead to things, like not being to find a bathroom scale able to register my weight.

If you go to Bratislava, you’ll find Cukraren (with more accents and strange squiggles on its signage that my keyboard will allow) on Michalska, just a few doors down from St. Michael’s Gate and across from these ugly gargoyles. I don’t remember what the hot chocolate costs, but I didn’t particularly care after tasting it.

This little guy obviously wants more hot chocolate.