Best Sea Salt Caramels in NYC?

Cathy C. asks: I’m afraid I’ve become addicted to chocolate-covered sea-salt caramels, and look for them wherever I go. Who makes the best ones in the city (willing to go to Jersey or Connecticut, too)?

Dear Cathy C.: Those are a passion of mine, too. I used to visit The Meadow – a sea-salt emporium in the West Village – to scan the aisles for those caramels, which include Xocolatl de David, Sahagun, and Lillie Belle. Since the store originates in Portland, Oregon, where many of the best caramels are made, they often have a good selection.

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The Bay Ridge store

But then a friend who lives in Bay Ridge brought me a tiny box of sea-salt caramels from Deliso, a rather obscure maker of chocolate bonbons near the corner of Third Avenue and 87th Street in Bay Ridge, near the 86th Street stop on the R. The caramel filling itself was salty and buttery and – most important to me – firm, providing a good chew and not running all over your chin.

The chocolate, too, was good: a dark Belgian, upon which a tiny pile of sea salt rode. It’s the perfect combo of sweet, buttery, salty, chewy, and chocolaty. And just today I went there in person to buy a box to take to a friend in San Francisco. I’ll tell her, “These sea-salt caramels will teach Portland a lesson!”

Deliso Confections
278 87th Street
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
718-567-7600

Chocolate-covered sea-salt caramels are $1.75 apiece, and this is a king’s ransom worth.