L.A. Burdick Chocolates

L.A. Burdick Chocolates was founded by Larry Burdick in 1987 in New York, where he had trained in European chocolate-making techniques and developed the hand-formed confections that became the brand’s most distinctive products. The signature chocolate mice, which are formed by hand with a white chocolate face, silk ribbon tail, and almond ears, are the products that made Burdick’s name in the artisan chocolate world: not because mice are an obvious chocolate format, but because the labor-intensive hand-forming and the precise detail of the finished confection demonstrated the chocolatier’s skill and the brand’s commitment to craft over convenience.

The Georgetown Wisconsin Avenue location at 1319 is among the retail and cafe addresses that the Burdick brand has opened beyond its original Walpole, New Hampshire base and the New York and Cambridge locations that followed. The shop at 1319 Wisconsin functions as both a retail chocolate shop and a chocolate cafe, which means customers can buy the truffles, the chocolate bars, and the confections to take away, or they can sit in the cafe and order the hot chocolate that Burdick’s is equally famous for.

The Burdick hot chocolate is made from the brand’s own chocolate, which is ground and prepared as a thick, intense drink that is substantially different from the powder-and-hot-water format that most hot chocolate in American cafes represents. The use of real chocolate, with its cocoa butter and the flavor complexity of the cacao origin, produces a hot chocolate that has the density and the depth that the European chocolate cafe tradition has always provided but that American hot chocolate preparation has rarely achieved.

The Wisconsin Avenue location at 1319 is in the mid-Wisconsin commercial block, between the lower commercial cluster and the upper boutique section. The chocolate shop serves Georgetown’s appetite for premium confections for gifts, for personal indulgence, and for the hot chocolate that is particularly appropriate to the Georgetown winter.

Hours run from 10am most days, 11am Sunday, with extended closing on Friday and Saturday. The Georgetown Burdick location at 1319 Wisconsin is in the commercial block between the Compass Coffee and the boutique cluster above. The combination of the chocolate shop and the hot chocolate cafe at the same address creates a two-visit destination: the customer who comes for the chocolate to take home can be converted by the hot chocolate service into a longer stay, and the cafe visitor who lingers over the drinking chocolate will inevitably purchase the boxed chocolates for a gift. The seasonal chocolate collections that Burdick produces for the major gift-giving seasons, particularly the holiday season, provide the retail dimension that makes the chocolate shop a gift destination as well as a personal indulgence address. The Wisconsin Avenue location is close to the Georgetown University campus, which contributes a student population to the chocolate shop’s customer base alongside the Georgetown residential community and the neighborhood’s visitors. Hours run from 10am most days and 11am on Sunday.