Rick and Shaw Lash present some dishes from the development of the XOCO menu to the Frontera team. In addition to featuring tortas, Rick is developing soups for XOCO. These caldos are based from a rich stock and will be served to order.

The GGC crew is starting to frame out the space, forcing us the rethink elements of the design. Again we confront the dilemmas of working in an old buildling - this time in regards to the limitations of space. We lost inches in several dimensions, losing almost a foot east to west forcing us to make some tough design decisions.

In tandem with Farr Associates we are working with Goldberg General Contracting. They recently finished an exciting LEED Platinum private residence, the Yanell Net Zero home in the Ravenswood neighborhood in Chicago. We thank them for their work on XOCO.

As you walk in the front door of XOCO, your sense of smell will register something familiar—the unmistakable aroma of roasting cacao. The XOCO team has already begun importing beans from Tabasco, the famous cacao growing state in Mexico, to produce a bean-to-bar product to be used in hot chocolate and molded candies. Is your mouth watering yet?

The process is simple, but fascinating:

We receive our cacao in burlap sacks from the growers in Tabasco. It is already fermented, but unroasted.

The cacao is roasted in the oven and cracked in a food processor, to separate the useable cacao nibs from the cacao skins that are pulled out in the grinding process.

Both the nib and the skin are put through a Champion juicer, to juice the cacao liquor from the nib. The wet skins are discarded.

The liquor is mixed with sugar and freshly ground cinnamon, and poured into the melanger. The granite wheels grind the sugar crystals into the cacao liquor to produce the mouth feel desired for finished chocolate. The time elapse on these two photos is five hours.

The ground and melanged chocolate is poured onto parchment paper and left to cool. This chocolate will set up untempered, but can also be tempered for a finished, molded bar.

All hot chocolate at XOCO will be made from this bean-to-bar process. We’ll be open early, frying churros every morning, and filling our cases with fresh-baked Mexican pastries. Now, is your mouth watering?

-Shaw Lash, Chef/Manager, XOCO