Listen up, chocoholics: Your fix has arrived.
City Bakery’s annual Hot Chocolate Festival kicks off tomorrow with a rotating menu that highlights a different version of the sweetly warming quaff each day. The cocoa celebration, which continues through the end of February, began in 1992 after owner Maury Rubin hosted a party for customers that featured seven different flavors.
Although Rubin admits he’s especially fond of what he calls quiet, nuanced tastes, like bourbon hot chocolate and vanilla bean, he says, “They’re all like my children.”
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But lest patrons tire of caramel or banana-peel hot chocolate — two of the most popular flavors — the bakery introduces a new one during the festival. This year, it’s a “Moulin Chocolate Rouge,” an invention incorporating dark chocolate, espresso, pomegranate and lemon.
“It’s a little bit of a jumble,” Rubin says, “but it’s a very exotic ride.”
Other off-beat flavors include a “tropical” hot chocolate — a combination of banana, orange, lemon, grapefruit and coconut — and a Valentine’s Day-themed “Love Potion” concoction, which Rubin calls “gentle, but heavy-duty” and features the bakery’s homemade hot fudge sauce poured on top of hot chocolate.
More of a white chocolate fan? Head to the bakery on Feb. 24 for the “Ode to the Polar Bear” hot chocolate, the only version on the menu for adherents of the snow-colored stuff.
Adding to the wintry feeling of the festival is the bakery’s “Night of Knitting” event, slated for Feb. 18, an evening of — you guessed it — cocoa and knitting. Guests will participate in a series of workshops with six city-based knitting stores and, of course, sip unlimited amounts of the 10 flavors served that night.
As if you needed another excuse to go.
City Bakery: 3 W. 18th St., at Fifth Avenue; 212-366-1414. For a full schedule, visit hotchocolatefestival.com.
christina.amoroso@nypost.com