Chocolate Shops We Love: LaRue Fine Chocolate

“My momma hated her name, but I always thought it sounded like she should have been painted on the side of a B-17,” says Elizabeth McDaniel, Maitre Chocolatier and proprietor of Greenville, South Carolina’s LaRue Fine Chocolate, named for her mother, Dora LaRue Smith Logan. It equally has a French and Southern ring to it and is a fitting tribute for a chocolate shop that not only has some va-va-voom visual and gastronomical appeal, but one that is rooted in family connections. While the shop — and one of the chocolates — was named for McDaniel’s mother, her mother-in-law painted the cocoa bean mural that adorns one wall, and her husband occasionally is given naming privileges, resulting in dark chocolates that ooze blood-red raspberry puree being called “Red Wedding.”

A South Carolina native, following a successful career in wine, it was McDaniel’s niece who is partially responsible for turning her onto the next best thing after her previous life in wine: a life in chocolate. “I just needed a project to do with her because I'm not particularly good with children,” says McDaniel. “I found a recipe for hand rolled chocolate truffles, and I looked at her and went, hey, you like chocolate, I like chocolate. Let's make these. And so we started making truffles.” What started as a holiday hobby between McDaniel and her niece turned into a passion, one where friends and family also recognized McDaniel’s talent, and she eventually enrolled in Vancouver’s Ecole Chocolat Master Chocolatier program. “The day after my last day working in the wine business I hopped on a plane and went to Vancouver,” says McDaniel. “And then I came home and started a business.”

That business, LaRue Fine Chocolate, was not initially conceived as being a brick-and-mortar one. McDaniel started making chocolates in her family’s DOA-approved guest house, and selling them at Downtown Greenville’s Saturday Market, a highly vetted farmers and producers market of only 75 vendors, until the questions kept coming: where was her store? “With wholesaling, you have to put the address of where your product is manufactured on the box with the ingredient label,” says McDaniel. “And so one day, I just had someone show up at my house. And it happened like three times. And I gotta say, there's something just a little creepy about somebody just showing up at your house and thinking you're a chocolate shop and you're not being a chocolate shop. So I decided it was time to have a real space.”

The Store

Much more than just a place to buy craft chocolates, LaRue is also a full bar and cafe, with a high quality coffee program. “I decided that if I was going to do the whole opening-a-space thing, I was going to do all the things,” says McDaniel, bringing all aspects of her former life as a barista, bartender, and wine specialist to the location.

The space itself has a lot of moxie, a simultaneously cozy and airy cool-kid clubhouse—scented with chocolate—retrofitted into what would otherwise be a perfunctory industrial space. “I fell in love with the industrial fans,” says McDaniel, of the two large fans recessed into one wall. “I told the people who showed me the space that if you can carve me off 1500 square feet that include these fans, then I will sign my letter of intent.” The building is a repurposed World War II-era warehouse that functions like a loft space, with bathrooms and other resources shared by other cool-kid tenants such as Unlocked Coffee Roasters, Six & Twenty Distillery, and Carolina Bauernhaus, all of whose products are also on the menu one way or another at LaRue.

Top Selling Confections

McDaniel uses both Valrhona and Cordillera for her chocolates, and offers roughly 15 flavors at a given time, with some of the most popular being:

Sweet Kentucky

“Everyone’s favorite is the Sweet Kentucky,” says McDaniel, which has a molten, bourbon-spiked sea salt caramel center wrapped with dark chocolate. McDaniel utilizes Maker’s Mark for the bourbon element, which gives a decidedly tipsy feel to the caramel interior.

The Dora LaRue

Having already tributized her mother with the name of the store, McDaniel also wanted to create a confection to honor her “badass” momma. Encased in a geometric, dome-shaped, milk chocolate shell, the Dora LaRue includes an interior made from local Nellie T’s peanut butter with a graham cracker crunch.

The Earl

A toss-up between this and the Scheherazade for the 3rd best-selling spot, The Earl won out for it being McDaniel’s favorite. A milk chocolate ganache is infused with Earl Grey tea and local honey, and dipped in dark chocolate, topped with candied lemon peel and lemon salt.

Also Look For

As a former wine professional and all-around alcohol expert, McDaniel sells Bourbon & Chocolate and Wine & Chocolate flights in-store of 4 paired chocolates with corresponding libations. McDaniel is also experimenting with cheese chocolates, which have a shorter shelf life and are therefore subject to limited availability, but for Greenville’s recent Euphoria festival she created 3 different chocolate/cheese confections: Parmesan, Rosemary & White Chocolate, Crème Fraîche & Milk Chocolate, and a Point Reyes Blue Cheese, Aged Balsamic Vinegar & Dark Chocolate.