Chocolate Bash dresses fruit in decadence

Facing the tumult of school kids on break for the holidays, I had an ace up my sleeve this year: Belgian chocolate. More than that, thanks to the recent arrival of the growing Southern California chain Chocolate Bash, there’s a place in town serving indulgent combinations of fruit mixed with chocolate, so I could convince their mom our midday outing included at least nominal nutritional benefits.

Chocolate Bash started out in Newport Beach e few years ago, and expanded to greater Los Angeles and Orange Counties prior to arriving in Pacific Beach this fall. It’s a sparce looking shop, except for a stylized chocolate drip appearing to seep down the back wall, and along the counter front. And chocolate drip is appropriate: within the glass counter case are dipped treats ranging from strawberries ($2.50 each) to Oreos ($2), sitting in hardened pools of melted Belgian chocolate.

I can’t claim to have seen a desert shop quite like this. It’s partially a café, serving coffee and smoothies, and a little bit creperie, prone to devising treats out of crepes, pancakes, and waffles. But just about everything gets served dripping with chocolate, or if not that, then Nutella, a maple syrup sauce, or a concoction known as “cookie butter.”

We stuck with chocolate signature treat, dubbed the Bash Roll ($14), which features a rolled-up crepe decoratively bathed the three kinds of available chocolate: dark, milk, and white. Inside the crepe are wrapped two kinds of fruit, the choices including banana, blueberry, strawberry, kiwi, and pineapple. Milk chocolate covers the entire thing, while white and dark are drizzled in an enticing pattern over the top.

Much of the menu features variations on this sort of construction. One called a “sushi crepe” ($14), sees the crepe rolled up and presented as bite sized morsels resembling sushi roll slices, topped by small cookies, and bathed in chocolate. Another, the “Bash Burger,” presents a stack of four small pancakes, with fruits stuffed between each layer, to take on a vaguely burger-like shape, at least before the whole thing is drenched in the now-familiar milk, dark, and white chocolate pattern. There’s even “Crepuccini” ($17), where the crepe is sliced like the ribbon-shaped pasta, fettuccini, and the chocolate poured over it like sauce.

For $15, you can order the fondue-like “Fruit and Dip Plate,” which allows you to dunk each piece of fruit individually. Or, order your chocolate covered fruit on a stick ($5-7). Okay, on this chocolatey kabob, you can swap the fruit for either cream puffs, brownies, Oreos, or marshmallows, but I didn’t let the kids know these were an option. Behind our self-imposed fruit mandate, we tried the unusual pairing of pineapple chunks and a rich, dark chocolate ($5).

The kids didn’t enjoy this match as much I did. They preferred the milk and white chocolate dunked strawberries, with second place going to the banana and blueberry crepe roll, upon which the chocolate remained smooth and syrupy, rather than hardening as it did on the fruit.

I’d hoped to eat everything on site, but the still-new restaurant has run short on dine-in plates, so it’s temporarily packaging everything in cardboard containers. Taking it all home meant it would be a struggle to hide from mom just how much chocolate smothered the supposed fruit snacks I’d bought the kids. Not a problem that couldn’t easily be remedied though, with a well-selected peace offering: a slice of cheesecake with a healthy swirl of milk, dark, and white Belgian chocolates ($8).