As I mentioned in my Valentine’s Day ideas post, the Cocoa Lounge was offering an all you can eat chocolate dessert buffet for the first half of February.
With my sweet tooth, I had to go check it out. The Cocoa Lounge is located inside the Palm Terrace restaurant at the Island Hotel in Newport Beach.
Once inside the restaurant, we were ushered to the back, where the Cocoa Lounge was. The room was a little small, but luckily it didn’t get too crowded despite a steady influx of people all night. Pictures were a little hard to take because they set a green blue mood lighting. Grrr…
For $18 per person ($12 if you dine at the restaurant first), you could help yourself to all the chocolate desserts. In addition to various prepared dessert trays, there was also a station making fresh crepes and hand dipped ice cream sandwiches. There was also warm chocolate bread pudding sitting next to the crepe and ice cream station.
Here were some of the offerings:
Once I finished taking photos, we attempted to try at least one of everything.
For the ice cream sandwich, they dipped it in chocolate and you could also top with sprinkles, nuts, etc. I let mine be just chocolate.
We ended up sampling a good amount of desserts. I think there were about 10 we didn’t get to.
Overall, we had fun but I’m not sure I’d be back. The desserts were a little bit above your average buffet quality, but nothing really stood out. My favorites were the chocolate bread pudding, the s’more cupcakes and booze truffles.
While it was fun to experience once, I didn’t think I was able to consume enough sweets to get my $18 worth. Even with my sweet tooth, I could only eat so many desserts at once. Unfortunately the chocolate buffet is over for this year, but it’s an annual event, so you may want to mark your calendar for next year.
I read about this and it looked exciting! I don’t think I could eat that many desserts in one sitting either and I’m pretty sure I would explode from the sugar intake, but it looked delicious. Your photos looked great despite the lame lighting. Too bad nothing really stood out, but it’s fun to try things like this. I did something similar in Kansas City once with an all you can eat dessert bar – I think it was more exciting in thought though, too.
It was fun to see so many desserts and being able to help yourself to everything. Wish the quality was slighter higher and also wish I had something salty to snack on so I could eat more sweets. hehe
All of that looks so delicious!! I’m craving it now 🙁 lol Thanks for sharing!
Maybe you can visit next year?
Everything looks delicious, but I do agree that $18 is a bit much… especially since I know I can’t eat that much sweets. That s’more looked really good, though!
Yeah it was fun, but I like to eat a lot in buffets and I could only eat so much. I think if I had something savory too, I could have eaten more. heh