Dallas–Fort Worth, TXChocolatiers and Candy Shops

Chef Katherine Clapner opened Dude, Sweet Chocolate in a brick storefront on Eighth Street in 2009 and in 2024 moved it into a blue Victorian house at the corner of Eighth and Bishop, one of the neighborhood's oldest buildings. The menu keeps changing and runs to truffles, chocolate salami and fudge. Order the Crack in a Box, and a cup of the drinking chocolate, made with Valrhona cocoa, ground Ecuadorian dark chocolate, cane sugar and sea salt.

Chocolate Secrets is a longtime Oak Lawn chocolate shop whose chocolatiers come from seven countries, which makes for a diverse menu of flavors, and it keeps a wine list alongside the chocolate. Hot cocoa comes in dark chocolate, English toffee and Mexican spice, and the classic dark is rich and velvety with hints of bitterness from the house-made dark chocolate. Order the dark hot cocoa, or the Mexican spice swirled with whipped cream and topped with chocolate shavings.

Mother-daughter duo Andrea and Cindy Pedraza have made chocolates in Oak Cliff since 2009, first from a house on Seventh Street in Bishop Arts, and in 2026 they began moving back into a space of their own on Centre Street, shifting their chocolate-making there. Andrea brings modern flavors of Mexico to European chocolate. The line runs to bars and molded shapes, truffles, pecan turtles with caramel she makes from scratch, and the Toasted Coconut bar, milk chocolate molded into an oak leaf. Order the pecan turtles.

Kay Thibodeaux, trained through Ecole Chocolat, opened her first chocolate shop in Northlake in 2021 and this Lakeside room in Flower Mound in 2024, naming the business for the trips she and her husband take to try chocolate and see how it is made around the world. Belgian and French dark and milk chocolate goes into truffles, bonbons with fruit or filled centers, caramel pecan clusters and bourbon pecans, and she teaches truffle-making classes. Order a box of truffles in flavors like amaretto, Aztec spice and orange cream.

Pinkitzel's Bishop Arts store is a hot-pink candy shop themed on Marie Antoinette and Willy Wonka, with candy lining the walls. It carries more than 200 varieties of bulk candy sold by the pound, along with saltwater taffy, gourmet chocolates and bars, bright lollipops, rock candy, bubble gum and nostalgic old-time candy in boxes like Dots, and holiday flavors and products come and go. Start at the bulk candy, the store's main attraction, and add some saltwater taffy.