MarieBelle: A Chocolate House for the Ages

To start, combining French chocolate with Scottish high tea seems contradictory; after all, the former is about taking taste up to 11, while the latter has for several centuries tried to convince the world that haggis counts as “food.” Could this end badly?

I wondered that when I took my seat for high tea at MarieBelle in Manhattan’s chic SoHo neighborhood. I honestly did not know what to expect. Sure, I was in one of New York’s most respected chocolatiers, but what does that have to do with tea? Moreover, what does it have to do with a midday snack tradition that has never been prepared with any sort of exacting consistency? Here is when the psychic presence of Maribel Lieberman, creator of MarieBelle and confectionary wunderkind, chimes in with her plot-forwarding phrase “Oh, just you wait.”

La Vie au Chocolat

First, some context: outside the storefront, I was in New York and it was 2021. When I stepped inside, it was Paris, 1886. The front of the space is where diets are sacrificed to the gods; chocolates from mildly naughty to Vegas-grade sinful line the shelves by the hundreds. In the back, however, is where the fun starts. Ain’t that always the case?

Lieberman has recreated a Maison de Chocolat, an old-world Parisian chocolate parlor that harks back to 200 years ago. These salons, if you will, attracted artists, writers, and other creatives. They sat at a table for hours, making them hangouts of a sort. At MarieBelle, the décor and ambience are definitively Belle Époque, and bien sur the chocolate is exquisite!

The French part of the program kicked off right away with a welcome glass of champagne. A bit of bubbly is hardly legendary, especially around the corner from Balthazar in SoHo, but it added an air of mystery to this high tea. And served in a coupe, a glass style developed in 1663 specifically for sparkling wines, it quickly got everyone rosy, chummy (and hungry).

As for as the chocolate, Lieberman is astonishingly loyal to the confection’s ancestral forms. How? She goes all the way back to the Mayans, serving it up in historically accurate liquid form. I refer to the high tea’s first course – a thick and creamy beverage composed of 70% cocoa and 0% sugar (an Indian import Native Americans would not have known). Folks, it was 100% INTENSE. Seriously, I now know how much sugar we’re used to tasting in the chocolate we’ve been eating over the years.

Bonnie Scotland

So, after bouncing off the walls from a caffeine high — because what’s better than pairing pure dark and white chocolate goodness with a follow-up macchiato?  The tea began! A three-tiered tower of goodies arrived. And like any good siege, you start at the bottom and work your way up. A selection of finger sandwiches on the lowest level first met my mouth – creamy avocado and endive and an even creamier salmon and oat cake. Next up was a yummy selection of scones and madeleines with butter and jam, perfect with the macchiato. An elegant array of petite pastries, macaroons and a tiny chocolate fondue served as the crowning glory.

If you’re thinking that this overtly French infusion into Scottish tradition is a bit bizarre, the two countries actually have a thing going. In fact, they go all the way back to 1295, in a kind of you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours association against England called the Auld Alliance. A fusion of the two cuisines was bound to happen. Interestingly, none of the high tea offerings à la MarieBelle were particularly filling. But all together it became a very satisfying meal — more the Scottish variation of the afternoon ritual.

A Nod to Lieberman

At this point I must credit Lieberman with a degree of culinary restraint: being a chocolatier, the idea of sweetening things up for American palates must have been ever-present when she came up with her high tea idea. The finger sandwiches were left to their own merits (and thank the stars, since candied salmon is not for everyone) but when it came to the scones and the candies intended as an after treat, none were overbearingly sweet. Sure, the chocolate was rich, but it was not jaw-breakingly sugary. After all, it was obvious that this was a meticulous culinary exploration of new ideas, not a half-baked attempt at innovation.

Lieberman is having fun with a grand European tradition, injecting it with new life by toying with parallel essences. Her MarieBelle is a breath of fresh air offering a menu chock-full of teas and smoothies, to say nothing of ganaches and, of course, chocolate (hot, cold, and bite-sized). Who wouldn’t be happy with that?