Le Tour du Chocolat - Part 1

My friend, Alice, from the bay area likes to forward me things she comes across online that look like cool things to do in Paris. She forwarded me a link to a NY Times article titled "Le tour du chocolat" a month or so ago and I finally got around to exploring.

It's a little tour of some of the chic-est chocolatiers in Paris, 10 or more, and the writer took his little Velib bike and hit up all of them in a row to get a sampling. I was a little intimidated to go to TEN chocolate places in sequence, figuring that by the 3rd one, you would be trying harder to swallow than to appreciate it, so I broke it up into segments. So far I've only completed part 1: Jean-Charles Rochoux and Christian Constant.

Let me preface by saying these aren't your ordinary See's shops. Not that I don't love See's, but this is like chocolate sold at Neiman Marcus - if Neiman Marcus sold chocolate. At Jean-Charles Rochoux, they had these intricate chocolate sculptures.

Very Easter-esque, though I prefer filled chocolate. I ended up getting une petite boîte des truffes - 6 little cubes of melting heaven dusted in cocoa powder. And I tried to surpress a smirk when the woman put the little box in a big fancy bag and walked the bag around the counter to me, like I was at Nordstrom. Here's a picture of the bag.

Compared with the size of my little box of truffles.

I think they lost money on me.

Christian Constant is famous for it's unusual, international flavours. E.g. chocolat ganache infused with Ylang-Ylang flower. Has anyone heard of ylang-ylang flowers or is that a French term, because when I went to the Fragonard perfume museum they had ylang-ylang perfume and I've never heard of that flower. Anyway, I got one of those - from the Comoros Islands, as well as a cardamom one from Malabar, and a saffron thread one.

They also had chocolate pastries, and not-chocolate pastries. Super, super gourmet. And super, super good.


Part 2, 3, 4, and 5 to happen later ;)