This hot chocolate is, well, hot.
Locals and tourists are lining up for as much as an hour in frosty temps for elaborate cups of cocoa at Glace by Noglu, an Upper East Side ice cream spot from Sasha Zabar — the 32-year-old son of appetizer and artisanal market impresario Eli Zabar.
Last Saturday, the shop sold a record 1,200 hot chocolates, which cost upwards of $10 and come in flavors such as s’mores, crème brûlée, peppermint and cookies ‘n’ cream.
“There’s a line around the block from the moment we open until the moment we close,” said Zabar.
On Tuesday afternoon, it was a chilly 25 degrees outside, but that didn’t keep customers away.
Tourists Kyle Hufford, 44, and his son Joseph, 18, were making their third attempt to score the buzzy beverage, after finding the line too long over the weekend and the shop closed on Monday.
“We had to come back, ” said Kyle, who was visiting from San Francisco and scored a s’mores hot cocoa after about 15 minutes in line. It was well worth it.
“It’s amazing,” he told The Post. “It’s like a camp fire marshmallow.”
Not surprisingly, social media is fueling the popularity of the photogenic drink, which is reminiscent of both the once viral $15 Black Tap milkshake towers and the acclaimed cocoa at City Bakery, which closed in 2019 after nearly three decades. On TikTok, the hashtag #glacebynoglu has more than 142k views.
“I was scrolling through TikTok [and saw it] – I love the idea of marshmallows around the hot chocolate. It looked kind of cool,” said Celeste Frazier, 23, who recently moved to New York from Alabama.
“This is the longest I’ve ever waited [for food],” added Frazier who came for cocoa with her mom. “It’s kind of like a ‘why not?’ moment.”
The hot drink was initially added to Glace’s menu in November as a seasonal pivot to keep the ice cream shop afloat during the winter.
“As it got colder our sales started to drop off. I thought, ‘what could we do that will give us just enough business to make it through winter? We came up with hot chocolate,” said Zabar. “We always had meringue laying around as a topping. I had this idea to change the recipe slightly and put it on the rim.”
The result is a signature “marshmallow fluff” that is applied to the rim of the cup with a pipping bag and then bronzed with a culinary blow torch to form a thick, sugary bumper.
The vessel is then filled with homemade cocoa made with 56% dark chocolate and topped off with home made whipped cream, crushed candy, cookies and other accoutrements, depending on the flavor.
Customers can also opt to customize the sips with a scoop of ice cream.
Even jaded Gothamites can’t resist.
“There’s so many tourists outside I thought maybe I’m playing myself as a New Yorker by waiting,” Bronx native Nikki Lofton, 52, a voice actor and event planner, told The Post. She lined up to get a hot cocoa on Tuesday after seeing it on Instagram, and had no regrets after taking a sip of the s’mores flavor.
“It’s worth the hype,” she said.
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