Portland, ORHot Chocolate

Portland Monthly's winter hot chocolate guide counts four to five versions on the menu at Cloudforest, made with handmade dark Ecuadorian chocolate sourced by owner Sebastian Cisneros, including dark, rose and cardamom varieties. The magazine calls the result a liquid chocolate truffle that melts into meringue like fluff rather than a typical cocoa. Its signature add on is a hand cut marshmallow, torched to order for a dollar fifty extra. Order the dark hot chocolate with the torched marshmallow, the combination the guide highlights as the shop's own move. The cafe is now on SE Hawthorne Boulevard.

Roste Chocolate House roasts its own single origin chocolate and, per Portland Monthly's winter hot chocolate guide, keeps both a classic hot chocolate and a specialty Mexican Chocolate with rotating varietals on the menu. The magazine describes the Mexican version as creamy yet sharp, spicy yet sweet, built to show off whichever chocolate is currently in rotation rather than bury it in sugar. All of the shop's items are made in house, from the chocolate itself on up. Order the Mexican Chocolate to taste that week's varietal directly, and ask staff which bean is currently running.

Ranger Chocolate has made bean to bar chocolate in Portland's Central Eastside since 2013, first under the name Cup and Bar. Portland Monthly's winter guide describes today's cup as a sweet, creamy beverage built on a house made chocolate syrup base and finished with latte art. Willamette Week's earlier visit, when the same shop poured as Cup and Bar, found a dark chocolate blend with espresso notes, filled with chocolate chunks and served with a small chocolate bar on the side. Order the hot chocolate and ask for the chocolate bar garnish if it is still offered.

Willamette Week's hot chocolate guide singles out Creo Chocolate's signature cup, made from seventy three percent dark chocolate crafted from Heirloom cacao beans grown in Ecuador, for a deliciously bitter edge that sets it apart from sweeter versions around Portland. The shop has grown to several locations since, with its Northwest Portland location on NW 23rd Avenue among them. Order the signature hot chocolate rather than a milder blend; the dark, bitter profile is the reason the guide picked this shop over sweeter competitors in the same roundup.