An all-chocolate tasting course debuts at one of Philly’s premiere vegan restaurants

At one Philadelphia restaurant, dinner isn’t finished without a bite — or several — of chocolate.

Vedge is home to what co-owners Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby believe to be the world’s first tasting course dedicated to bean-to-bar chocolate. That’s small-batch chocolate that uses the same producer throughout the candy-making process, from harvesting the cacao to molding the bars.

The sweets, which come at the end of the Center City vegan restaurant’s $79 six-course tasting menu, come plated in sets of three on a marble cutting board with notecards that describe each bar’s unique origins and flavor notes. Jacoby, who oversees the program, sources the chocolates from Bar & Cocoa Chocolate in Greensboro, N.C., or Washington D.C.’s The Chocolate House, rotating them every few weeks. (The course can also be purchased à la carte for $12.)

In late May, the platter featured bits of a 62% dark chocolate bar from BOHO Chocolates made with zesty shreds of lemongrass and slightly crispy bits of crystalized ginger, plus a 90% dark chocolate bar that tasted like really fancy soap (in a good way). Rounding out the trio was Fruition Chocolate Works’ Oko-Caribe, a relatively standard 68% Dominican dark chocolate bar with a smooth finish that Jacoby said reminded her of Sno Caps.

The goal of chocolate course is two-fold, Landau and Jacoby said. It introduces customers to single-origin chocolate without the commitment of buying full-sized bars, many of which can cost more than Vedge’s $12 à la carte price. Plus, it has liberated the couple from feeling like they need to shoehorn chocolate into the tasting menu’s true dessert course, according to Jacoby. She used to consider chocolate an iron-clad dessert requirement.

“It’s like a little bow that wraps up the end of a meal,” said Jacoby, a three-time James Beard Awards semifinalist for Outstanding Pastry Chef.

Vedge started offering the course in May 2025, Jacoby said, though it technically wasn’t their idea. It was Zeke Emanuel’s.

The renowned bioethicist, University of Pennsylvania professor, and healthcare advisor to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden (whose brothers are also pretty famous) pitched the idea to Landau and Jacoby last April during a talk at the university. Emanuel, who has committed his career to the study of what it means to live well, also moonlights as a professional chocolatier.

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Emanuel told The Inquirer that he started his own line of single-origin chocolates — aptly named the Zeke Bar — in 2017 in partnership with Missouri-based Ashkinosie Chocolates as part of a personal mission to take on new hobbies that “expand his mind.” The doctor has launched four limited-edition bars since the line’s founding, the most recent being a 65% dark chocolate bar made with Trinidadian cacao bean and tart cherries that earned him a Good Food Award in 2025.

Chocolate making has taken Emanuel as far as Madagascar to scout cacao producers, he said, and reignited his interest in food. It’s also made him more discerning about what goes into good chocolate.

Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, Hershey’s milk chocolate bars were good enough for Emanuel and his dad, he said. “We thought good chocolate was Lindt,” said Emanuel. Now, it’s about texture and terroir, or how the environment food was forged in shapes the way it tastes.

Emanuel wants others to have that same appreciation too, he said, even if they still walk away preferring a classic milk chocolate bar. It’s “not necessarily something we think about,” said Emanuel, “but learning is one of the great things about dinner.”

Emanuel’s pitch was a perfect fit for Vedge from the get-go, said Landau. The vegan restaurant, which has stood at 1221 Locust St. since 2011, is known for inventive plant-based cuisine that lets vegetables shine as they are instead of relaying on imitation meats. Sourcing also matters: Their kitchen makes nearly everything from scratch with local produce or vegetables grown on Landau and Jacoby’s own Chester County farm.

“When [Emanuel] talks about chocolate, you’re just mesmerized,” said Landau. Jacoby, his wife, concurred: “I guess he’s like this with everyone, but the passion he had was just so palpable.”

Emanuel visited Vedge in July to teach the restaurant’s staff about single-origin chocolate, Jacoby said, and comes by every six weeks or so with roughly a dozen hand-picked chocolate bars for Vedge to pull from for the end-of-dinner mignardises (bite sized after-meal sweets). The biggest hits have been bars blended with passionfruit and green Sichuan peppers.

Vedge’s vegan status does pose one key limitation: no animal products, so no milk chocolate. Not that it matters to Emanuel; he thinks milk chocolate is just OK.

It’s “too sweet,” he said, and more of a “gateway drug” to the harder stuff, like the 90% dark chocolate bar. Or the one with peppercorns.

Vedge, 1221 Locust St., 215-320-7500, vedgerestaurant.com