Who doesn’t love an all-purpose chocolate shop? At Josophan’s new city store, which opened last month, you can find spiced drinking chocolate, nut-encased blocks, colour-splattered slabs of cocoa and, importantly, The Best Ice Cream Topping In The World (made of wafer balls, multi-flavoured chocolate pebbles and other crunchy, scoop-enhancing ingredients). There are also chocolate lollipops that are as pattern-heavy as wallpapers and many excellent pralines for all your gift-box-filling whims. If you’re on a choose-your-own streak, there are lots of good selections you can make while peering through the eye-catching display cabinet: Caramel, Pineapple and Coconut, Peanut Butter-Cup, Raspberry Rubis and the light tingle of the Mayan Chilli are all good flavours to seek.

Jodie Van Der Velden has been winning over choc-impressionable customers at the original outpost of Josophan’s, in the Blue Mountains, since 2005. I’m glad the much-closer CBD store has opened. I’ve always heard great things about Josophan’s – most recently David Ralph of Kakawa praised the business as a place worth a chocolate pilgrimage on the first Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry podcast – and everything I’ve had only reconfirms all the cheerleading this chocolatier has received.

Josophan’s, Corner of King and York Streets, Sydney NSW, www.josophans.com.au