740 Valencia Street, San Francisco
Micro-batch chocolate
Dandelion Chocolate makes bean-to-bar chocolate but they go beyond small-batch and actually custom roast each bag of beans they import to bring out its unique flavors. They opened this —their first café and open factory kitchen — in December 2012. They have since opened a store in the Ferry Building, a café in Tokyo, 2 additional stores in Japan, a store in Las Vegas, and pop-ups in CA and beyond (currently they have a popup on Fillmore St. in SF). They opened their 34,500-square-foot factory, café and chocolate salon in the Mission in 2019.
Roasting beans by the bag, Dandelion isn’t aiming for consistency but instead to make the best-tasting chocolate each time. Each bar is wrapped in pretty handmade paper with the wrapper signed by its maker. The wrappers include a helpful description of the beans and the process used, and the flavor notes of the particular bar.
At the café, you can watch chocolate-making & ask questions of the chocolate makers while sitting at the bar along the side of the kitchen drinking chocolate & coffee drinks and eating pastries and other baked goods.
In addition to their chocolate bars, you can buy chocolate décor for your home like cacao pods. They also offer chocolate making classes & trips to cacao farms to learn about cacao farming.
CBTB Tip:
They have free house-made marshmallows on the counter for you to add to your chocolate drink.
Other SF Dandelion locations:
Find Dandelion Chocolate at:
Read more on CBTB:
- Death [march] by chocolate
- Surface Bloom
- Local chocolate
- Have a seat @ Dandelion Chocolate
- What’s that?
- Your mission: hot chocolate
- What century do you want your chocolate from?
- Lots of love at SF’s Chocolate Salon
- Beneficial weed grows in SF
