Miami's Fontainebleau Hotel takes the sweets to new heights.

In the hotel universe, if chocolate is the currency of decadent indulgence, Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel stands unquestionably as the cocoa connoisseur’s version of the U.S. Mint – or in this case, the U.S. chocolate mint. Here, flavors come in seemingly endless denominations, including the signature salty caramels, pralines and chocolate-dipped strawberries. In Miami, these are not merely legal tender in the marketplace of the sweet tooth, but just as synonymous with the Fontainebleau as the hotel’s iconic beachfront profile.

Hotels have almost always prized their relationships with pillow-top or guest-room delicacies, but the Fontainebleau has, in some ways, actually built its foundation on chocolate. And the foundation, like the chocolate itself, is solid.

The 2008 reopening that revived the hotel’s 1950s persona brought the arrival of Yannis Janssens, a master chocolatier from Belgium, who oversees Solo, the cake and patisserie shop that reinvigorates sweet memories from 50 years ago, with offerings that cycle through the hours of the day in much the same way the sun moves through the sky.

“We begin with doughnuts in the morning, then snacks and delicious pastries in the afternoon and later at night it turns into just chocolate decadence,” said Mabel De Beunza, the hotel’s public relations director. She said as many as 2,000 pieces of chocolate a day are produced at the hotel for consumption at banquets and meals or for sale at the shop itself. And for after-dinner socializing or just wide-eyed window shopping, Solo remains a busy stopping-off place.

“As opposed to guests having to wait for turndown [for their sweets], on the way out of the restaurant they can stop at the confectionery store, pick up a sweet treat and head to bed,” she said.

Solo also answers the call for guests wanting customized cakes or chocolates – such as the hand-carved, 2-foot-high solid chocolate statuette of one guest’s wife that made a surprise appearance last year at a birthday celebration at one of the poolside cabanas. The full-scale (and fully staffed) chocolate operation is so vast and versatile that it even accommodates guests’ kids who want their turn at a chocolate-making, chocolate-dipping adventure. And on the Fourth of July, the chocolatiers are inspired to create an exact – but entirely edible – replica of the Statue of Liberty.

As for guest-room chocolate, that practice still lives on in the VIP suites, said De Beunza. Newly arrived guests may be greeted by a solid chocolate replica of the hotel’s “staircase to nowhere,” each step adorned with a praline or some other confection. But it is really a staircase to somewhere, after all, crafted of chocolate-covered steps back into a past that, at the Fontainebleau, will always stay sweet.

Article posted by Spencer Samaroo, Managing Director, Moo-Lolly-Bar
The best online chocolate, lolly and confectionery store on the web!

If you like what you have read check out our updates on Facebook and Twitter.

Source and photo: Hotel Interactive