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The Easter Bunny Goes to New Orleans

Posted by Emily Stone, March 13, 2008 at 10:15 AM

If you gave up something for Lent this year, chances are it was either carbon emissions or chocolate. And if you fall into the first category, I'd recommend that you celebrate the close of the Lenten season by supporting a business in the city that that put Mardi Gras on the map—New Orleans. Try Sucre on Magazine Street, the year-old business whose owners Tariq Hanna and Joel Dondis have been hailed by the New York Times as plugged-in post-Katrina entrepreneurs.

Their inspirations are mainly Parisian (their macarons are modeled on Ladurée's, and they pack gifts into pink paper purses à la Fauchon) mixed with sultry French Quarter signatures like the Meuniere bon bon (dark chocolate filled with a burnt-butter-and-almond white chocolate ganache).

This Easter, Hanna is trading chocolates painted in the city's retina-burning purple-green-yellow color scheme for confections cast in the spring-season pastels he grew up with in Britain. He's making candy bunnies by hand—some of them two feet tall—as well as ostrich-size dark-chocolate eggs filled with no-cream milk chocolate truffles, and springy lavender and blueberry pastries.

Sucre will ship overnight to anywhere in the country—and while the package isn't exactly carbon-neutral, it uses less fossil fuel than you would flying to New Orleans and back.

About the author: Emily Stone, proprietor of Chocolate in Context, is a chocolate enthusiast, itinerant traveler, and a lover of literature who lives in Pittsburgh. She's been a movie reviewer, a reproductive health researcher, and an independent bookstore owner. Her writing has appeared in the magazines Budget Travel, Travel + Leisure, and Time Out New York, as well as on the websites World Hum and Epicurious.

1 Comment | Tags: chocolate, Louisiana, macarons, macaroons, New Orleans, Sucre

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