Few desserts can claim to have changed what diners expect from a drink, but Chin Chin's hot chocolate has a fair case. When Chin Chin crowned a cup of hot chocolate with a scoop of marshmallow and took a blowtorch to it in 2013, it was something few Londoners had seen. Two winters later the idea caught fire online, and fans queued in the snow outside the Camden shop. Versions of it have since appeared on menus around the world, and what began as a house speciality has become, in the founders' words, what people expect a hot chocolate to look like.
This November the company takes the next step. From Monday 9 November until 9 May 2027, a Mello pop-up in Selfridges Foodhall on Oxford Street will serve a short menu built around that celebrated hot chocolate, and will launch Mello, a shelf-stable whipped marshmallow crème designed for home use. Chin Chin describes it as the UK's first squeezable marshmallow crème.
From a sour sorbet to a viral cup
The story begins, like many good culinary inventions, with a correction. The team had made a sorbet that was too sharp, and made a marshmallow to soften it. Someone then tried a flamed scoop of the same mixture on hot chocolate, and a classic was born. The drink joined the menu in 2013, went viral in 2015, and proved so popular that its sales paid for the Soho flagship, which opened in 2017.
For an ice cream parlour, the result was an unusual business model: winter became Chin Chin's busiest season. Between 2020 and 2024 the team ran regular seasonal pop-ups beside Selfridges from a pink truck called Pink Baby. It was there, piping marshmallow on to baked Alaskas, that the founders had their brainwave. If the crème could be put in a tube, anyone could finish a hot chocolate, decorate a cake or top a bowl of fruit at home.
"Our torched marshmallow hot chocolate was something people hadn't seen before, and now it's everywhere," says Nyisha Weber, who co-founded Chin Chin with her partner Ahrash Akbari-Kalhur. "We started piping marshmallow crème onto baked Alaskas at Selfridges and wondered, why can't everyone do this at home? Two years later and we got it right. We're excited to launch Mello in the same building where the idea started."
Two years in the making
Work on the tube began in the summer of 2024, and Mello was perfected over the following months in the company's Soho development kitchen, without a branding agency. Akbari-Kalhur drew the Mello logo himself, taking his inspiration from Weber's red, marshmallow-covered lips.
The product is made in small batches by Chin Chin's pastry chefs, using the same recipe the team has refined for its own menu. The ingredient list is short: organic sugar, egg white, vanilla, Maldon salt, cream of tartar, guar gum and marshmallow plant. Mello is vegetarian, dairy-free and certified halal, and sells for £6.95 for a 175g tube. Beyond the hot chocolate, the makers suggest spreading it on cakes or whipping it into a marshmallow cold foam for matcha lattes. Online pre-orders are being taken through the brand's website.
The menu
The pop-up starts where Chin Chin itself did, with the hot chocolate. The Mello Hot Chocolate costs £5.50, with Italian hazelnut praline or salted butter caramel available for an extra 75p, and vanilla whipped cream or whipped caramel for £1.25. Two made-to-order desserts complete the menu, both at £8.95: a S'mores Salted Butter Chocolate Pudding, served just baked with torched Mello, butter cornflake crunch and cinnamon sugar, and the Mello-Mallo Fro-Yo, a kefir and marshmallow-plant frozen yoghurt with blueberry compote, butter cornflake crunch and honey.
An independent success
For the hospitality trade, Chin Chin offers a lesson in organic growth. Founded in Camden in 2010 as a self-funded ice cream laboratory, it has never taken external investment and remains entirely founder-led. Its expansion has been funded by its own guests, one hot chocolate at a time, and its reputation within the industry is as a launchpad for dessert trends that travel far beyond its own counters.
Mello also shows how a restaurant or café can turn a prized dish into a retail brand without losing what made it special. Rather than licensing the idea or handing it to a manufacturer, Chin Chin has kept production in-house and launched Mello where the idea took shape. Few independent dessert businesses have made the move from counter to shelf with such a clear story to tell.
The Mello pop-up is in Selfridges Foodhall, 400 Oxford Street, London W1A 1AB, from 9 November 2026 to 9 May 2027. It is open Monday to Friday 10am to 10pm, Saturday 10am to 9pm and Sunday 11.30am to 6pm. Further information at mellodeluxe.com and on Instagram at @mellodeluxe.
