Fran's Chocolates - Downtown

Fran's Chocolates serves its drinking chocolate in a white ceramic bowl, an indulgent presentation built around the 65 percent Venezuelan dark hot chocolate on the menu. Fran's has kept hot chocolate as a standing category on its own current menu, alongside the salted caramels the shop is best known for nationally. The chain now runs four Seattle-area shops, from Georgetown to Bellevue. Order the Venezuelan dark version at the downtown shop.

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Fran Bigelow's chocolate company, a Seattle chocolate institution for more than four decades, keeps a downtown shop on First Avenue just south of Pike Place Market. Bigelow set out to bring more chocolate flavor to her candies after a trip to France in the late 1960s, and one of her goals has been to introduce children to darker chocolate. Her own favorites are the peanut butter cup and the coconut Gold Bar, something like an Almond Joy crossed with a Mounds bar. Order a Gold Bar and a peanut butter cup.

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