In 1657, a Frenchman opened the first chocolate house in London's Queen's Head Alley in Bishopsgate, offering the Spanish-style chocolate drink to English consumers who had previously known only coffee and tea as exotic hot beverages. Chocolate houses quickly gained a reputation as more decadent and luxurious than coffee houses, attracting an aristocratic clientele willing to pay higher prices for the expensive imported cacao preparation. The establishment of dedicated chocolate houses alongside coffee houses created a dual stimulant culture in Restoration London, with each beverage associated with distinct social circles and literary communities.

Restoration poets including John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, referenced chocolate in their verse as an emblem of aristocratic excess and sensual pleasure, contrasting it with the more intellectual associations of coffee. The chocolate house became a literary setting in Restoration comedy and satirical poetry, representing a space where indulgence and wit overlapped, a dichotomy that would continue to shape how poets depicted the tension between bodily pleasure and mental refinement in subsequent centuries.