Chocolate isn’t supposed to taste like sugar and butter. There should be a hint of forbidden when you eat chocolate. One of the best pieces of chocolate cake in Orange County is at Alta Coffee in Newport Beach.

This cake is always moist, always more about the chocolate than the sugar. It’s subtle, it’s grown-up. It goes perfectly with coffee. I’ve never had a bad slice there except once and that was because they had either stored it in the fridge or the display case got too cold.