More chocolate than you could ever dream of, at Echo Park's Chocolate Dispensary

Is it a dream? You walk into a store and are greeted with hundreds and hundreds of gorgeously designed high end chocolate bars and other offerings. Shelf after shelf, row after row. And yet, astonishingly, it is real.

The Chocolate Dispensary in Echo Park — part craft chocolate bar seller, part tasting room, part café — stocks over 1,000 chocolate products, from more than 100 chocolate makers across the world. That variety, according to co-owner Kala Maxym, makes it not only unique in L.A., but also, one of a precious few in the U.S. (And no, the name has nothing to do with marijuana. Though it's probably a great place to satiate the munchies).

The seemingly endless range of chocolate creations.

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Courtesy The Chocolate Dispensart

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On a recent visit to the store, which opened in December 2024, my husband and I quickly found our senses overloaded. Where to turn first? Rather than just organized by traditional "dark" or "milk" chocolate sections, the store uses quirkier categories: "hard core" (for super strong 80% - 100% cacao), '"vegan," (though chocolate is naturally dairy-free), "$12 and under," and "weird," among others. ("Weird" included things like a dill bar, a caramelized onion bar, and a tomato basil bar, in case you were interested.)

But the key, Maxym says, is to actually taste the chocolate, not just peruse the labels. She says she conceived of the store from the beginning as akin to a tasting room in a winery,  "a place that you could come in, and you didn't just buy it off a shelf and walk out, you could actually engage with it."

The store's drinking chocolate is in high demand.

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Courtesy The Chocolate Dispensary

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An "oasis" for customers

The genesis of the place came when Maxym, who had previously been an opera singer but had pivoted into wine and cheese tastings, was working at Silverlake Wine. And she thought “why isn’t there anything like this for chocolate?” That idea grew until one night she and her husband Dale Roy Robinson felt the entire project download on high from some creative cosmos when out to dinner.

Dale Roy Robinson and Kala Maxym outside their store.

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Courtesy The Chocolate Dispensary

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She still has the original notes on her phone, she says. "We wrote a business plan in about two weeks, and we opened nine months later," offering their vast selection of craft chocolate that's also ethically made and sustainably sourced.

A "$10 for 10" flight showcasing a range of chocolate makers.

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Courtesy The Chocolate Dispensary

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Maxym says the store has been successful from the beginning, and that it goes deeper than simply stocking excellent chocolate. The store seems to be a respite. Customers tell her "as horrible things in the world ebb and flow, we're an oasis for when they can't handle life right now."

She's developed strong relationships with chocolate makers around the world, speaking with as many as possible (as she says on the website, "time zones be damned") to ensure transparent sourcing.  Not to mention trips to countries like France and Italy where she and Robinson spend much of their days tasting top-of-the-line chocolate to bring home. (Cue the sound of the world's smallest violin.)

To help us through our paralyzing indecision, she proffered us a tasting flight: $10 for 10 bites. Genius. We carefully split each square in half, oohing and aahing as we found our favorites (he loved the one studded with coconut, I Ioved the one with rose petals and dried strawberries), and stared at each other quizzically as we found a few which weren’t quite to our taste (I swear there was one which tasted of curry).

To end our visit, she suggested we try one of the many options of hot chocolate. I took it, I sipped, I moaned with pleasure. It was French-style, unctuous and thick, and not too sweet. She said she makes it with a 100 percent cocoa powder, salt, vanilla, and dark chocolate disks, which gives it the richness.

And yes, I did literally lick the whole cup before I was done.