Cold morning, City Bakery Hot chocolate.

Kimberly, sitting in the City Bakery, holding her cup of hot chocolate with homemade marshmallow:
[sips] Oooh.
[pause, sips] Oooh.
[pause, sips] Oh, my God.
[pause, sips] Wow.

-

I sit in front of my pretzel croissant, fruit-nut muffin, and cup of the same and am relieved. Completely relieved, since I'd promised a memorable breakfast and it's a drizzly, cold, early morning.

The rest of the meal goes mostly along those lines. We sit, catch up and take in the awesomeness. The hot chocolate, drinking chocolate, really, is an intense warm, thick, cocoa-y consistency. Instead of rose water Swiss Miss, this chocolate feels as if the bakery had melted a bar of milk chocolate right into our cups. The marshmallow is a bit overly sweet and vexingly dense (it never melts, just sits, iceberg-like, on the molten surface).

Pretzel croissants, to me at least, are the star of the pastry show at City Bakery. Kimberly's chocolate croissant and my fruit-nut muffin (which may have contained apples, cranberries, raisins, and possibly, pecans) were all right, but the pretzel croissants are what keep me coming back. They really do blend the best of both of their namesakes - the flakiness of a croissant and the salty pretzel chew.

I love the City Bakery for early morning breakfasts, but need to get there before it gets crowded (by 9 a.m.). Between 7 and 8:20 it's peaceful.