If you're craving a drink that's sugary, sometimes spiced and certainly all things nice, you've come to the right place. We're particularly spoiled for hot chocolate here in Melbourne, with venues taking to mugs of gooey, molten chocolate with the same sort of all-consuming fixation usually applied to coffee.
Need a reason to head outside and brave the chill? Warm up at one of these spots around town for Melbourne's creamiest and most delicious hot chocolates.
Who says you can't take hot chocolates to the next level? Order the Campfire Chocolate at Mörk’s concept store and you'll get a smoke-fogged stemless wine glass, served with a little beaker of hot chocolate, plus smoked salt and a toasted marshmallow. This is everything but classic.
This cafe-cum-winebar is not just about sandwiches and pre-dinner drinks. The Heartattack and Vine tram are serving up a Spanish-style hot chocolate for grown-ups built on a house-made ganache and married with a spicy and fragrant chilli-orange syrup. Think a liquid Jaffa with a hint of heat.
We can all relax: Pidapipo's internet-breaking hot chocolate is back for a third winter (hurrah!). The cult hit classic recipe features rich and silky 70% dark cacao hot chocolate and a generous amount of Pidapipo’s signature housemade fior di latte gelato (made from Jersey Milk from Warrnambool) folded with marshmallow. To garnish, a croccante (a crunchy Italian brittle with nuts) made from Piedmontese hazelnuts adds the perfect layer of crunch on top of your hot chocolate. This year and for the first time ever, the gelato wonderland will also be serving up an exciting matcha version of the classic, featuring matcha gelato, matcha whipped cream and a milk matcha crumble.
Get your hot chocolate the traditional Colombian way: served in a little jug, and then showered with crumbly queso. Yep, cheese in your chocolate. Don't think about it, just do it.
This artisan chocolatier sticks the better part of a block of its finest dark choc into your mug here. And because it's winter, and why the hell not, staff can whack in a good pinch of chilli to cut through the rich chocolate if you want. Hot in every sense of the word.
Hardware Société is arguably one of Melbourne's most iconic laneway cafés, thanks to its decade-long tenure amidst an unpredictable hospo scene and its perennially popular brunch dishes (croque madame, anyone?). But what you may perhaps not know is that this eatery is home to one of the greatest hot chocolates in town. Named the 'Velvet Blanc Hot Chocolate', this version comes with 33.5% premium callebaut chocolate, lychee, rose and ganache. Bougie? Okay, a little. Delicious? Unforgettably so. Traditionalists may opt for the classic hot chocolate with 54% dark caullebaut.
Dubbed an "urban beer garden hideaway", Riverland is situated on the banks of the Yarra in the historic Federation Wharf vaults, making it an ideal starting point for a voyage into the night. When the weather gets cold, the bar brings back its OG boozy Milo cocktail – a decadently hot alcoholic drink with dark rum, maple syrup, oat milk and a generous swirl of cream. You can follow up with other boozy winter warmers, too, like Riverland's famous spiced mulled wine.
We’ve had burgers. We’ve done dawgs. We’ve crammed in more ribs than we want to think about, and now here’s Bowery to Williamsburg: the new, New York-inspired eatery that’s rounding out the US food craze with fat lox bagels. But you can also get a dang good hot choccy here, courtesy of its premium 'Koko Deluxe' cocoa blend from West Africa and a peanut butter hot chocolate that's well worth the sugar coma.
Part of the five-star RACV City Club hotel in the heart of Melbourne, this patisserie may be best known for its stunning celebration cakes – but we reckon it's one of the city's top players in the hot chocolate game. Super rich and served in a variety of wickedly delicious ways (Baileys, dark or vanilla, for example) with a dollop of whipped cream on the side, the customisable winter warmer has had many of its customers crowning it one of the best in town. We can't disagree.
You can't call yourself a true Melburnian until you've wolfed down the Italian-style hot chocolate at Brunetti Classico – an intensely sweet bowl of chocolate mud so dark its bordering on black and so thick you could stand a spoon in it.
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