rit. craft chocolate & coffee
Fantastic music-themed craft chocolate gifts and bars made fresh on site, located almost as far south as you can go in Hiroshima city. rit. is a stylish chocolate shop, that also serves great coffee. The staff are friendly, there’s good English on the menu and the products and shop have a creative, funky vibe. rit. is well worth seeking out.
rit. (the name comes from the Italian ritardando used in musical notation to indicate a gradual decrease in tempo) is a family-run affair and the passionate owner is the designer of the shop and products, while his wife makes the delicious brownies and cookies.
Owner and designer, Nao-san, speaks English well and is very friendly and passionate about his new venture. He told us opening this shop is his dream come true. As a cacao-bean roaster can create a fair bit of smoke, he chose the out-of-the-way location (right in front of Mitsubishi’s factory gates in Eba) to avoid disturbing neighbors when roasting his cacao beans.
The recipe of the chocolate is simply kept to the two most important ingredients: cacao and sugar. They use several kinds of cacao beans and produce a range of chocolate containing between 63% and 75% cacao, all over which you can sample before purchase.
If you are serious about chocolate or are looking for some unique & tasty gifts for chocoholic, music-loving friends I highly recommend making the trip down to rit. The shop’s up-cycled DIY style store is packed with design elements inspired by the owner’s love of Northern Soul music and Mod fashion. The shop is unique and fun and the great coffee and chocolate drinks pair very well with the chocolate bars, cookies, and brownies.
The deep-chocolate soft-cream served with a raspberry drizzle is velvety smooth, the brownies are divine and the chocolate gifts in the shape of cassette tapes or records are so original and fun. The chocolate is the main event here and you can view their mini-factory from the window at the back of the shop.
Select your cassette tape chocolate bar and take it home in a real cassette box, or leaf through the chocolate 7-inch record single shaped chocolate bars to choose your favorite original rit. designed cover art.
On top of the amazing quality, the staff are friendly and the owner speaks English naturally. Order inside and sit out at the back for a relaxed view of a small harbor while you have a coffee, hot chocolate, ice-cream or brownie. Coffee is roasted by local roasters Cradle Coffee and made on a Seattle-made, hand-assembled Slayer espresso machine.
Be prepared to pay for the quality here as prices are not cheap, it was easy to drop more than ¥1000 per person for drinks and sweets. But rit. products should not be confused with mass-produced convenience-store-level chocolate or coffee. This is fresh, hand-crafted chocolate of the highest quality.
The 7-inch record shaped chocolates go for about ¥1300, and small bars of chocolate are ¥375 each. A cafe latte is ¥572 and the delicious Cafe Mocha (70% Cacao) is ¥680 and Hot Chocolate (70% Cacao) is ¥702.
All the cups are disposable, so you may want to bring your own to reduce waste. I’d love to see the coffees and hot-chocolate served in proper mugs for eat-in customers to improve the drinking experience as well as to reduce waste. It’s unclear, however, whether space limitations allow for this. There is also a fair bit of plastic packaging for the gifts (record and cassette shaped chocolates) which customers can hopefully reuse in some way.
The shop has a modern, western-style toilet. There are 4 large tables behind the shop for seating looking out to the small harbor. There is 1 official parking space next to the classic car and mopeds, but parking along the street for a short time shouldn’t be a problem.
rit. craft chocolate & coffee
Opening hours: 12:00-18:00
Closed: Wednesday
Address: 3-5 Eba-oki-machi, Naka-ku, Hiroshima-shi, Hiroshima-ken 〒730-0837
Address in Japanese: 〒730-0837 広島県広島市中区江波沖町３−5
Tel: 082-557-4413
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