A plain buttered cr? is sprinkled with sugar and squeezed with

A plain buttered cr? is sprinkled with sugar and squeezed with lemon (£3.50). It’s light, delicate, smooth and sugar-crunchy, the acid tickling the sides of the tongue into wanting more. No cloying ice-cream, no sauce and no embellishments are needed.I like La Galette a lot. It’s simple, fresh, bargain-priced and clever enough to do one thing well Go for breakfast, lunch or dinner And here’s a tip: have the pancakes. *La Galette, 56 Paddington Street, London W1, tel: 020 7935 1554 Open daily 10am-11pm Around £40 for two including wine. For £27.50, you can buy 5kg of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

The same amount of Porcelana, the latest gourmet chocolate to hit the shops, would set you back £445 – that should cure your sweet tooth

For £27.50, you can buy 5kg of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. Open the elegant box and you’ll find a dozen individually gift-wrapped tablets But it’s not just a matter of flashy packaging. Amadei wants us to pay high prices for the very best chocolate, like we do other luxuries such as fine wine. In fact, in its native Italian market, Amadei drives home this point by selling its range through wine merchants.Back in 1986, the French firm Valrhona set the precedent by applying wine vocabulary to its own chocolate, referring to different types as “cacao fins” and crowning its Guanaja variety the “grand cru” It even introduced wine-style tasting notes.

El Rey, a Venezuelan firm, now imports chocolate made from beans grown on single estates – a kind of equivalent to what wine buffs call terroir. Amadei takes the idea to a new extreme – inside the box you get a card of descriptions: “decisive flavour of almonds which alternates with pressed olives”.Is this new gourmet world of chocolate just a gimmick? The presentation may seem overdone, but these firms have a point. Most commercial chocolate in the UK is padded out with dried milk, vegetable oil and a lot of sugar, and it’s made with the hardy low-grade forestero bean. Once these problems are removed, there’s a whole world of new tastes out there.I asked the experts for advice. Jenny Cork, chocolate buyer at Fortnum & Mason (which has one of the finest confectionery counters) says look out for top firms – Valrhona, El Rey, Amadei, Barry Callebaut, Jacques Bernachon, Pierre Bonnat and Pierre Marcolini.Go for chocolate made with the criollo bean, advises Chantal Coady, author of numerous books on chocolate and owner of chocolatiers Rococo in London’s Chelsea. She also co-founded the Chocolate Society, though now has no link to it, and also founded the Campaign for Real Chocolate.