National Hot Chocolate Day gets a decidedly elevated upgrade this year at Hotel Chocolat’s Southport location, where the beloved chocolate brand is transforming a childhood comfort into a curated tasting experience worth slowing down for.

From January 24 through January 30, Hotel Chocolat is offering two thoughtfully designed Hot Chocolate Tasting Flights, inviting guests to explore the depth, texture, and nuance of its iconic drinking chocolates just in time for the January 31 celebration.

The Classic Hot Chocolate Flight showcases the brand’s signature style with a trio of standout flavors: Classic 70%, Salted Caramel, and Coconut White. Rich, balanced, and deeply cocoa-forward, the flight leans into indulgence without excess. Meanwhile, the Vegan Hot Chocolate Flight highlights Hotel Chocolat’s plant-based offerings, proving that dairy-free doesn’t mean compromise. Each flight also includes a mystery flavor, a playful wildcard that adds surprise to every sip.

Founded by Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris, Hotel Chocolat was built on a simple but ambitious idea: make chocolate exciting again. That philosophy still drives the brand today, blending innovation with ethics. More cocoa. Less sugar. Better sourcing. Better flavor.

Hotel Chocolat now operates 160 stores across the UK, along with cafés, bars, and restaurants. The brand grows its own cacao on a sustainable farm in Saint Lucia, home to both its Rabot Estate and luxury hotel, while chocolate production happens in Cambridge, England. With a growing footprint in the U.S. and Japan, Hotel Chocolat continues to reshape how chocolate is experienced globally.

At its core, this Southport tasting flight isn’t just about hot chocolate. It’s about reclaiming a familiar ritual and giving it a little polish, a little depth, and just enough surprise to make you pause mid-sip.

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In this intimate, wide-ranging conversation, Jacob Tolliver sits down with Tom Barnas to trace a career that feels less like a straight line and more like a series of fortunate collisions, each one louder and more electric than the last.

Tolliver reflects on his formative years in Chicago, a city whose clubs, musicians, and restless creative energy helped sharpen both his sound and his sense of purpose. That grounding proved essential when he landed the role of Jerry Lee Lewis in the hit Las Vegas production of Million Dollar Quartet. Night after night, Tolliver didn’t just play the piano. He wrestled with it, channeling the volatile spirit of early rock ’n’ roll and earning a reputation as one of the show’s most combustible performers.

That performance opened doors few musicians ever touch. Tolliver recounts surreal moments trading stories and stages with Jerry Lee Lewis himself, crossing paths with icons like Elton John and Mick Jagger, and learning firsthand that rock history isn’t something you study. It’s something you survive.

The conversation also explores Tolliver’s unlikely leap from a viral YouTube video to a Las Vegas spotlight, a modern myth fueled by old-school chops. While many artists chase algorithms, Tolliver doubled down on the physical act of performance, believing that live music remains the last honest handshake between artist and audience.

Musically, Tolliver refuses to live in a single lane. His sound pulls from rock, country, pop, and blues, blending classic structures with a contemporary edge. As a songwriter, he favors emotional immediacy over polish, aiming for songs that feel lived-in rather than perfected.

Now focused on his original music, Tolliver is entering a new chapter, one that honors the past without being trapped by it. His upcoming projects promise a sound that’s nostalgic but restless, rooted yet exploratory. In an era obsessed with reinvention, Jacob Tolliver is doing something rarer. He’s evolving while staying unmistakably himself.

For updates, releases, and upcoming performances, follow along at jacobtolliver.com.

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Chicago has always sold itself in steel and glass. The skyline rises, the river bends, the trains rattle on. But just beyond the clatter of the L and the low hum of Metra platforms, something softer begins to take shape: dunes that roll like quiet punctuation marks, wetlands breathing between rails, forests that seem improbable given their proximity to rush-hour traffic.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Tom Barnas and author Lindsay Welbers pull back the curtain on this other Chicago, one measured not in blocks but in trailheads. Welbers, whose explorations began as a personal attempt to reconnect with nature without leaving the city behind, has spent years mapping the green arteries that run parallel to Chicagoland’s transit system. The result is Chicago Transit Hikes, a guide that feels less like a hiking manual and more like a permission slip to wander.

Illinois, she reminds us, is far from flat in spirit. Its landscapes shift from oak savannas to prairies, from Lake Michigan dunes to quiet forest preserves that rank among the largest urban systems in the country. Many of these spaces remain overlooked, hidden in plain sight, accessible not by car but by train ticket.

What distinguishes Welbers’s work is its practicality. The book is slim enough to slide into a backpack, organized by rail line rather than region, and built for people who think in stops and schedules. Each hike comes with train-to-trailhead instructions, accessibility notes, dog-friendliness, seasonal highlights, and even guidance on what flora and fauna might be watching you pass through.

There’s history here, too. Old campgrounds like Dunewood, a favorite of Welbers’s, carry the echoes of early conservation movements and rail-era leisure travel, when Chicagoans routinely escaped the city by train in search of fresh air. These stories add texture, grounding each hike in something older than the rails themselves.

Public transportation, often framed as a means of commuting, becomes a quiet act of environmental engagement. It lowers the barrier to outdoor access, reshapes how residents think about their surroundings, and subtly redefines Chicago’s reputation. This is not a city divorced from nature, but one threaded through it.

As the conversation turns toward the future of Chicago Transit Hikes, one idea lingers: exploration changes perception. Step off the platform, follow the trail, and the city you thought you knew gives way to something wilder, calmer, and unexpectedly close.

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