Chef de cuisine Tracy Todd uses a balloon to create one of Toro Latin Kitchen & Lounge’s most popular desserts: La Bomba.
“It’s a very painstaking process,” Todd said. “You have to be very careful with it. If you do one part wrong, chocolate explodes everywhere. I have plenty of pictures of myself covered in chocolate.”
Toro restaurant owner and renowned chef/restaurateur Richard Sandoval created La Bomba because “he wanted something unique to both thank and wow his guests,” Todd said. Toro has had the La Bomba on its menu since Richard Sandoval Hospitality opened the restaurant on the ground floor of Hotel Clio in Cherry Creek in 2020.
La Bomba ($22) features a chocolate sphere with brownie bites, cookie crumbles, two kinds of ice cream and one flavor of sorbet and seasonal berries, all topped with edible flowers, raspberry sauce and creme anglaise. The menu says this dessert is fit for two, but one can usually feed up to four people. Todd recommends ordering two for a group of six or more.
To serve it, Toro’s staff clears the entire table to lay out a sheet of clear plastic. Guests are often taken by surprise when servers spin the chocolate sphere and suddenly drop it on the wooden table to crack it open and reveal all the delectable contents. Some waiters like to play a fun bit where they pretend they’ve never served a La Bomba before they “mistakenly” drop it on the table, Todd said.
You can use the cracked pieces of chocolate to dip into the pile of desserts, almost like a sweet nacho. And by the end, your table looks something like a Jackson Pollock painting. (It’s best not to wear dry-clean-only outfits.)
“Besides the ceviche, this is our most popular menu item,” Todd said. “But it takes eight hours of work just to make one Bomba from scratch.”
To make a Bomba, Todd tempers dark chocolate, which she dips the balloon into to create the chocolate sphere mold. “I don’t even want to start on how many times it’s popped on me,” she said. For the inside, Todd makes the brownie bites, whip cream, cookie crumbles and sauces from scratch. Local ice cream shop Sweet Action provides the ice cream and sorbet.
Toro usually serves around 25 La Bombas on the weekends, Todd said. “And people surprisingly like to enjoy it during lunch,” she added.
For Valentine’s Day this year, Todd has turned the chocolate sphere pink. She’s used white chocolate and colored cocoa butter to create the festive mold. Inside the Valentine’s Day-themed La Bomba, she’s swapped out brownie bites for buttery blondie bites and added tiny, homemade meringue cookies.
“You’re not going to find anything else like this anywhere else in Denver,” Todd said. “It covers all the bases for dessert lovers. You have a little bit of cake in there, a little ice cream, chocolate and meringue cookies. Whatever you’re craving, it encompasses it all.”
150 Clayton Lane, Denver; https://www.torodenver.com/