There is no Max Brenner

In my family, I am known for two personality disorders. First, I was born in New York. My wife and daughters forgive this, though, because they know that my mother lived there at the time I was born, and they accept that I felt it important to be near her at that moment. Also, I eventually transferred loyalty from the Yankees to the Red Sox, and so I am mainly forgiven for the original geographic sin.

The second is a more persistent problem. I really don't care much about chocolate. It's not that I don't like chocolate. It's just that it is not particularly important to me. This is beyond the comprehension of my XX-chromosome housemates. As the years have passed, I have learned to say, "Oh good", when my wife suggests we go to some other place to buy or eat chocolate. (I used to say, "Why?" and get piercing looks of the type employed by Superman when melting sheets of steel with his heat vision.)

So, after the McBurney reunion on Saturday, we wandered over to Union Square in NYC and went to a place called Max Brenner. This is kind of a chocolate emporium, based on somebody's fantasy realization of what Willy Wonka would build at retail. It is a big place, seating hundreds, and offers a sit-down area for dozens of chocolate-laced "foods" as well as a place to buy to take. It comes complete with fake chocolate pipelines reaching from one end of the store to the other, ending in large basins in which an electronic paddle mixes up 40 gallons of white or dark chocolate. As you wait, they parsimoniously offer you small samples of liquid and solid chocolate confections. Not enough to satisfy you. Just enough to whet your appetite.

After a 45-minute wait surrounded by hopeful 20- and 30-something year olds who have come down to lower Manhattan with their dates, or single-sex groups of three or four who don't have dates and used to go to Haagen Daz on the upper East Side, we get in.

Lots of choice, including the "mess" shown in the picture. We order. And instead of ecstasy spreading across the faces of Mrs. L and our friends, a vague disappointment. It turns out that the hype is better than the product. "Not very good chocolate", says one. "The granita is too grainy," says another. "Not enough brownie in the 'mess'", says the third. I extend my sympathies and graciously pick up the tab, just $37 for the four desserts.

My chocolate-free mango and yogurt drink, by the way, was excellent. But, really, there is no Max Brenner.