Any Melburnian chocaholic worth their smoked salt already knows about Mörk’s artisan hot chocolate powders served in Seven Seeds and other café stalwarts.
Now you can enjoy a Mörk hot chocolate made according to owner (and chief chocolatier) Josefin’s recipes in Mörk’s immaculate Errol Street Brew House. Mörkaholics can also pick up merch – hot chocolate powder, honey, T-shirts and so on.
Forget Cadbury’s. Mörk means ‘dark’ in Swedish; these chocolate powders come with a hefty cacao count. Husband-and-wife team Josefin and Kiril source cacao liquor from Venezuela, cocoa powder from Ghana and unrefined coconut blossom sugar from West Java, blending all three in their ‘brews’.
It comes as no surprise that the duo has a background in coffee. Kiril trained as a barista, and Josefin was working as a coffee roaster in Sweden, demonstrating dark chocolate tempering, when they first met.
Taking centre stage in Mörk’s concept store is the glittering brew bar. You wouldn’t know it, but submerged underneath the counter, there’s a bastardised coffee machine. The two-group coffee boiler has extended steam and hot water lines, coming through custom-made brass fonts and taps.
Little brown-glass bottles of chocolate soda syrup (added to carbonated water for the cold chocolate soda) and an array of treats decorate the bar. Tarts, cookies, pralines and marshmallows are Mörk-made; additional cakes are whipped up offsite, according to recipes by chef Shaun Quade, ex-Quay (Sydney), in order to limit kitchen contact between flour and cacao.
There’s no coffee. No hot food. No choc-free drinks. There’s not much space: three tables for two; one communal. Floating plants and copies of Frankie decorate the recycled Tasmanian oak surfaces; there’s also a jungle corner, courtesy of Collingwood-based plant wizards Loose Leaf.
Don’t miss the theatrical (and now Insta-famous) Campfire Chocolate: a smoke-enhanced hot chocolate that you’ll smell before you see. A smoking gun charged with beechwood smoke is responsible for the campfire element of this drink: a smoke-fogged stemless wine glass, served with a little beaker of hot chocolate, plus smoked salt and a toasted marshmallow on a stick (your edible spoon).
Perhaps you’ll opt for the Layered Chocolate: cold chocolate milk in a tumbler, topped with Shaun’s thick yolk-yellow, vanilla bean-flecked crema Catalana, which has been aerated in a syphon gun. Those orange speckles? Orange zest.
If you’re here early doors, try the Breakfast Chocolate – coconut milk, oatmeal and house-made oat milk, sweetened by fruity Alba cinnamon, grown in Sri Lanka, ground in Melbourne. Alternatively, up your cacao kick with the espresso-style, water-brewed Pure Dark (100 per cent cacao).
Mörk's appearance on Errol Street is timely – the store is a liquid alternative to cashmere long Johns. Nip in and pretend you're warming up by the campfire, marshmallows and all, or invest in a tin or two of something that guarantees cosy, chocolatey nights in.