Profile

Former neuroscientist and Union Square Café pastry cook Rachel Zoe Insler became obsessed with chocolate while apprenticing at Notting Hill’s Melt. She opened this one-woman shop in February 2009, down the alley tucked into Avalon Bowery Place. Unlike the typical American chocolatier, Insler focuses on unusual flavors and “terroir,” using descriptors more befitting a sommelier than a pastry chef. Confections include a hand-rolled Colombian dark-chocolate truffle (78 percent cocoa with a bit of Ronnybrook cream and butter), a Venezuelan Valrhona chocolate filled with cognac, and a Carribean chocolate with black tea and apricot. Insler favors salt over sugar, and her signature item is a dark-chocolate shell containing sea-salted caramel and topped with crushed Martin’s pretzels. — Daniel Maurer