Natalie Spooner is the Olympic Village’s self-appointed dessert critic
And she’s looking at the chocolate lava cake like it’s a gold medal
Earlier this week, Canadian hockey queen Natalie Spooner was posting on TikTok about her hunt for an excellent chocolate dessert in the Olympic Village. The notorious chocolate hound (she actually calls herself a “chocolate monster”) found a disappointing pudding cup and some dry chocolate cake for breakfast but nothing particularly mouth-watering.
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Canadian speed skater Courtney Sarault, meanwhile, was way ahead of Spooner on the chocolate front. “Found the winter olympics ~chocolate muffin~,” she captioned a TikTok video that has been viewed more than two million times—a wink at the famous chocolate muffins from the Paris Olympics two years ago.
This version is actually a tortino con cuore fondente, a dessert that we Canadians know as lava cake. The chocolate explosion is not technically an Italian dessert, though many Torontonians know it from Terroni.
It’s unclear why it took so long for a self-declared chocolate monster to find her way to the holy grail, but as of two hours ago, Spooner has achieved her first Olympic goal: chocolate nirvana. Now let’s hope she is equally successful with goal number two: winning gold.
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Spooner isn’t the only amateur food critic in Milan. Here’s her fellow Toronto Sceptre Emma Maltais reviewing her first meal in the village.
Over the course of the games, three kitchens in Milan, Cortina and Predazzo will serve more than three million meals. And while protein tends to be the lifeblood of elite athletes, this is Italy—so of course the dining hall includes a carb station.
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Courtney Shea is a freelance journalist in Toronto. She started her career as an intern at Toronto Life and continues to contribute frequently to the publication, including her 2022 National Magazine Award–winning feature, “The Death Cheaters,” her regular Q&As and her recent investigation into whether Taylor Swift hung out at a Toronto dive bar (she did not). Courtney was a producer and writer on the 2022 documentary The Talented Mr. Rosenberg, based on her 2014 Toronto Life magazine feature “The Yorkville Swindler.”
