12 Hot Chocolates Worth Crossing London For

Leigh’s is a daytime café on Ardleigh Road, run by two Cordon Bleu-trained chefs and built around a menu that changes with the seasons. For winter, that means a peppermint bark hot chocolate. It is also available iced, for anyone who finds December not cold enough. Pair it with the three cheese and red onion marmalade toastie, or the smoked ham, comté, mustard and cranberry. Sweet then savoury, and lunch is sorted. Find it: One and a Half, Ardleigh Road, N1 4HS.

On Sundays, while the flower market fills Columbia Road, a queue forms in a courtyard just off it. Andrea makes every cup to order, whisking Oaxacan cacao and milk by hand with a molinillo, the ridged wooden whisk Mexico has used for centuries. It takes a while. Nobody seems to mind. Ask for chilli and salt. Chilli and chocolate were paired long before Europe added sugar, and the combination still makes sense on a cold morning with an armful of eucalyptus. Find it: The Courtyard, behind Milagros, 61 Columbia Road, E2 7RG. Sundays, 10am to 4pm. There is a second Sunday stall in Victoria Park.

Dark Sugars has been on Brick Lane since 2013. You smell it before you see it. The chocolate is made from Ghanaian cocoa, and the shop is stacked floor to ceiling with truffles in flavours like gin and lime. The hot chocolate comes with a pile of chocolate shavings on top, and they keep adding until you tell them to stop. Most people do not. Order: the Hot Chilli, if Highbury has started something. The Pitch Black if you want it thick. Find it: 141 Brick Lane, E1 6SB. There are two more branches on Nelson Road in Greenwich.

For a Mexican hot chocolate on a weekday, go to Aguamiel, a churrería on Wellington Street. Its hot xocolate starts with olla syrup, made from piloncillo, star anise and clove, then adds Ceylon cinnamon and 60% dark chocolate. It arrives in a hand-painted clay mug. Order a churro with it. That is what the churro is for. Find it: 24 Wellington Street, WC2E 7DD.

Jens Knoop opened his first hot chocolate shop in Rye in 2013. There are now branches across the UK, several of them in London. The concept has not changed. You choose a cocoa percentage, a milk, and any extras, and the chocolate is melted down from flakes in front of you. The menu runs to more than 20 percentages, from a 28% white blend to a 100% dark with no added sugar. Everything from 54% up is vegan with a plant milk. Extras include sea salt, orange zest and chilli. It is the closest thing hot chocolate has to a wine list, and the staff are better at explaining it than most sommeliers. Order: a 54% if you are undecided. Or a 43% milk with sea salt from the Richmond branch, taken to go into Richmond Park.

Melt is a small chocolate shop on Ledbury Road, surrounded by the kind of townhouses that make you check your bank balance. The hot chocolate is made by melting chocolate buttons into milk, either 35% milk or 70% dark. That is the whole menu. It is very rich and very smooth. Order: the milk, in a small cup. A large is more ambition than most people can finish. Find it: 59 Ledbury Road, W11 2AA.

Maya’s is a small neighbourhood bakery with a hot chocolate made from 72% Pump Street chocolate and its own sugar-salt blend. It is rich without being bitter. Each one is finished with a large marshmallow, blowtorched at the counter until it blisters. Watching it happen is half the point. Find it: 37 Tulse Hill, SW2 2TJ.

Italian Bear Chocolate, co-founded by Andrea Alinovi, has made Italian hot chocolate in Soho since 2012, to an old family recipe. Choose milk, dark or a mix of the two, then make it spicy with cinnamon, ginger, chilli, cardamom or black pepper. The queue rarely clears, so book a table online. Laptops are banned from 3.30pm. Find it: 41 Broadwick Street, W1F 9QL. Card only. There is a second branch at 29 Rathbone Place, Fitzrovia.

The Nook sells from what used to be a cash machine in the wall on South End Road, opposite Hampstead Heath Overground. It melts Belgian chocolate into steamed milk at six strengths, from a 28% white to an 80% dark. Specials include pistachio, mint, orange and a hazelnut version called the Nooktella. Find it: 43 South End Road, NW3 2PY.

Mello Deluxe is a marshmallow dessert bar in Seven Dials Market, run by the team behind Chin Chin. Order the Hazelnut S’mores Hot Chocolate. The marshmallow is torched to order, and tubes of the marshmallow crème are sold to take home. From 9 November, Chin Chin will run a six-month pop-up in Selfridges Foodhall with a Mello Hot Chocolate on the menu. Find it: Seven Dials Market, 35 Earlham Street, WC2H 9LD. Walk in and order at the stall.

Gelateria Danieli is a gelato shop on Brewers Lane, the flagstoned alley off Richmond Green. Its hot chocolate is ground on site from 70% dark chocolate, then steamed to order with milk from Northiam Dairy. The Classic Signature is £4.50, and the Special Hot Chocolate Affogato is £7.50. Every version except the salted caramel is vegan with oat or soya milk, at no extra cost. Find it: 16 Brewers Lane, TW9 1HH. Open from 10am daily.

The Apple Blue is a brunch café beside Balham station. Each winter it brings back Thicc Cocoa, a drinkable dark chocolate ganache made with sea salt, vanilla, and milk and cream from The Estate Dairy. It is cooked on the stove top, finished with a rim of chopped milk chocolate and topped with a giant marshmallow. Find it: 212 Balham High Road, SW12 9BS.