Both of these are established dishes, so I don’t know if I could call them unexpected, but:
Jalapeno chocolate fudge cake, tried on a whim at a restaurant. Thought it might be a disaster, but hot stuff and sweet (and fatty) stuff works surprisingly well together. I suppose that it’s kind of closer to how the Mesoamericans used to originally eat cocoa, which could be with chilis:
Chocolate could be prepared in a huge variety of ways and most of them involved mixing hot or tepid water with toasted and ground cacao beans, maize and any number of flavorers such as chili, honey, vanilla and a wide variety of spices.[31]
The ingredients were mixed and beaten with a beating stick or aerated by pouring the chocolate from one vessel to another. If the cacao was of high quality, this produced a rich head of foam. The head could be set aside, the drink further aerated to produce another head, which was also set aside and then placed on top of the drink along with the rest of the foam before serving.
Five Guys does a milkshake with bacon sprinkles that I thought sounded like it could be pretty gross, but crunchy salty apparently works with sweet fatty as well. Goes somewhat downhill as the bacon looses its crispness, though. Be interesting if there’s some sort of waterproof coating that one could put on it. (“chocolate-coated bacon bits?”)
Both of these are established dishes, so I don’t know if I could call them unexpected, but:
Jalapeno chocolate fudge cake, tried on a whim at a restaurant. Thought it might be a disaster, but hot stuff and sweet (and fatty) stuff works surprisingly well together. I suppose that it’s kind of closer to how the Mesoamericans used to originally eat cocoa, which could be with chilis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_cuisine#Cacao
Five Guys does a milkshake with bacon sprinkles that I thought sounded like it could be pretty gross, but crunchy salty apparently works with sweet fatty as well. Goes somewhat downhill as the bacon looses its crispness, though. Be interesting if there’s some sort of waterproof coating that one could put on it. (“chocolate-coated bacon bits?”)
Chocolate and chipotle pepper go together very well too.