Lucky maintains an online presence too, and its new enough that the offerings are always in flux. Stang even takes requests from time to time. She relayed the story of a customer who used to stop in regularly on his way to dinner to ask if she could make a bar with caramel, peanut butter and pretzels. His persistence paid off: one evening, Stang responded by telling the man to return after dinner for an on-demand desert.
Though they make different kinds of chocolate, Lucky and Krause’s have both tapped into a familiar craving, one which has people getting in touch with an almost primal desire. According to Krause, chocolate itself is a celebration of the combination of good things from around the world.
“It’s pretty amazing that they were able to make out of it what it is,” he said of chocolate’s pioneers. “If you’ve ever had a cacao bean or nib, it doesn’t taste like much; it’s like throwing raw coffee grounds in your mouth. But they took everything good in the world, using the benefits of a global trade, taking ingredients from all over the place and combining them to make something good. Originally, you’d be stuck in your hometown, and all you would have that was sweet would be honey or maple syrup. You didn’t even know what you were missing.”
Stang said she’s designed her shop with the feeling of a chocolate box in mind, to give the chocolate aficionados the sense of being consumed, in a sense, by that which they love the most.
“Even the door, it’s leaded cut glass,” she said. “You can’t really see in it. It’s like when you open the chocolate box and there’s that piece of paper on top of it. People always go like, ‘Ooh’ when they walk in the door; it awakens kind of a childlike thing in people. Chocolate is like being in love. It awakens endorphins.”
This article originally appear in the August 5, 2010 edition of Saugerties Times.
