A seven-course chocolate tasting menu? Including fish?

Located in the fashionable streets of north London, Almeida restaurant and bar is exactly the sort of establishment you'd expect to offer trendy one-off menus and exciting, fresh ingredients. Squab pigeon... yes. Smoked eel and oysters... almost certainly. Butternut squash velouté... a must. Fine chocolate in every course... really?

To mark National Chocolate Week, which begins on Monday, Almeida's head chef Alan Jones and award-winning chocolatier Paul A Young are doing just that by joining forces to create an indulgent seven-course chocolate-tasting menu.

For one week only, diners will be able to feast on butternut squash velouté with a Venezuelan chocolate and cumin stirrer, smoked eel and oyster in chocolate vinaigrette and brill with a hazelnut and coco crust. The £60 meal continues with roast pigeon and candied carrots and an Amedei Toscano black chocolate jus. Dessert of poached figs with white, milk and dark chocolate comes after a cheese-and-(yes)-chocolate course and a kitsch pre-dessert of chocolate ice cream, almonds, fudge, cacao nibs, hundreds and thousands and marshmallows.

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The collaboration between Young and Jones is a natural progression. Both have worked with Michelin-starred chef and restaurateur Marco Pierre White and view their establishments as neighbourhood concerns – Jones has been head chef at Almeida since last summer and Young has two luxury chocolate shops in the area.

Last week, I was one of the lucky few invited to preview the menu at Almeida's private dinning room, a task I found just a little daunting. I'm pretty keen on sweet brown confectionery but wasn't sure whether I'd be able to polish off seven courses of the stuff.

Alan and Paul, though, are intent on taking chocolate beyond its traditional uses, and their enthusiasm is contagious. "I've really enjoyed creating this menu," says Young. "Chocolate is such a versatile and creative ingredient and it's been fantastic to be able to show this. It has so many characteristics and qualities, meaning that you can create so much with it. Chocolate is laden with textures so you can be endlessly creative with just one product."

Young is quick to applaud the experience that Jones has brought to the project. The chef's modern take on French cuisine using seasonal, simple and fresh flavours is evident throughout the menu. "The food at Almeida is all about seasonal ingredients and what better ingredient is there than chocolate? Our intention in creating this menu was to show people that chocolate is a lot more than just a dessert component; it has a complexity and depth of flavour that enhances a menu at every turn," says Jones.

With seven courses ahead of me, I feel the need for some fortification; but even the wine waiter seems stumped when asked which wine she would recommend to go with a seven-course chocolate banquet. "It is desperately hard to match wine to this menu," she says. Inexpertly, I opt for a glass of Merlot and prepare to indulge.

Sadly, the butternut squash velouté fails to do much to stimulate my taste buds. My fellow dinner guests soon get the knack of the chocolate and cumin baton, mixing in the correct amount of chocolate, but mine has partially melted on the hot plate and does little to balance the flavours of the overly rich and creamy velouté.

The second course of eel, oysters and watercress in a Dominican chocolate vinaigrette is equally disappointing. The individual components have been fantastically prepared and presented, but I fail to see how the chocolate improves the experience. In fact, I can barely taste it. Perhaps, I think, this won't be such a chocolate-laden ordeal after all. At this point, Young is raving about the dangers of over-powering a meal with chocolate, unaware that there seems to be little risk of that.

By the third course, however, the meal improves. Here, the chocolate is finally beginning to make an impression on my taste buds. The brill's crust laced with cocoa nibs and hazelnuts makes a fantastic addition to the delicately cooked fish and flavoursome mushroom fricassee. To the uninitiated, which includes myself, cocoa nibs look just like flecks of chocolate but are in fact cocoa beans that have been removed from their husks and separated. Sometimes described as the essence of chocolate, they add crunch and a subtle, but not sweet, flavour.

As we pause to await our next course, and Jones still slaves away in the kitchen, Young continues with his enthusiastic lecture. He is, it seems, not just obsessed with the quality of the chocolate and its versatility, but with its ethical dimension as well. "We make sure all our chocolate is as pure and ethical as it can be and to that end we support indigenous producers. For example, with several of these dishes I know the particular family who produce our beans, and unlike many of the large confectionery companies, we pay top dollar and don't fleece small producers."

After Young's sermon and a palate refresher, which combines cucumber, lime and chocolate in a surprisingly light manner, the meal progresses reasonably well. It is the main meat course of pot roast squab pigeon, served with candied carrots and a Madeira and chocolate jus, which really catches my attention. The fondant roast potato and tender French bird are just to die for, and only the most subtle, almost indiscernible, hint of chocolate seems to filter through. In between this meat course and two dessert courses is a rather dry and unsatisfying cheese course. As if by way of compensation, the dessert courses are simply fantastic, as you would expect from a chocolate menu at a restaurant of the quality of Almeida.

The two desserts – a pre-dessert (what a great idea) of chocolate ice-cream with hundreds and thousands, and poached figs in white, milk and dark chocolate – are, as I may have mentioned, just wonderful. Both not too sickly and magnificently sweet at the same time.

As I finish the final course, feeling surprisingly and pleasantly under-full, I'm able to head over to the kitchen to meet the chef who, despite having just produced a seven-course chocolate feast, seems relaxed. He is adamant that the menu is not just a gimmick. "The menu is different from most other chocolate or tasting menus, because from the start we used a different formula and didn't just add a thick chocolate sauce to every course. We certainly didn't want to go down the usual chocolate-and-venison route. Rather, we made sure each course was thoroughly researched and tested, using Paul's expertise and my dish-building, to create something unique," he says.

Jones is certainly correct that the meal avoids the usual pitfalls of a speciality tasting menu and does make full use of Young's skills and chocolate's versatility. But despite the commercial hook of National Chocolate Week, I'm still left wondering what the point of it is. While the dessert courses and the pigeon were fantastic, throughout much of the meal, and particularly in the first few courses, the chocolate seemed surplus to requirements. And the less said about the velouté and cheese course, the better.

But perhaps I'm missing the point. As Young points out: "It sometimes gets forgotten that chocolate is supposed to be fun and quite naughty." This menu is certainly both of those things and is sure not to disappoint hungry chocoholics out there. Personally, though, I'll keep my luxury chocolate and fine dining separate – except for the dessert courses, that is.

Dark matter: An Almeida chocolate special

A Salad of Smoked Eel, Oysters and Watercress, with a Chocolate Vinaigrette

Serves 6

1 smoked eel
12 Maldon Rock oysters

Chocolate vinaigrette

36g light muscovado sugar
25ml sherry vinegar
25ml fine balsamic vinegar
20g 64% Dominican Republic chocolate pieces
tsp Maldon sea salt

Salad

1 bunch of watercress
8 charlotte potatoes
40g butter

Remove the flesh from the central bone of the eel. Remove the skin, then cut each side into 9 pieces. Open the oysters, remove from shells. In a small saucepan, bring the vinegar, sugar and salt to the boil. Leave to simmer for 5 minutes. Pour on to the pieces of chocolate, then blend well. Simmer the potatoes in a little water, salt and butter until soft, allow to cool slightly then peel and slice into four. Remove the bottom of the stalks from the watercress, wash and shake dry.

Place 3 pieces of smoked eel and 3 pieces of potato alternately in a circle on your plate. Place 2 oysters on top of the potatoes and then drizzle the vinaigrette around. Finish with some sprigs of watercress.

The Chocolate Menu is available from Almeida for seven days only from Monday 13 October, priced at £60. To book call 020-7354 4777