La Maison Du Chocolat

If you really get into the sources and processes of the chocolate you eat, you’ll be likely to start feeling the tension between chocolate farm, manufacturers, and ‘chocolatiers’. To me it somehow became a playfull quest to figure out wether a ‘chocolatier’ works with his own bean-to-bar process (like Amedei, Bonnat etc) or if he is ‘merely’ a ‘pralinier’ who buys source material from e.g. Callebaut or Belcolade (eg Dominique Persoone). There’s nothing wrong with the latter, except off course if they’re trying to hide too hard. Like where would La Maison Du Chocolat buy theirs? I know where Galler is buying most of theirs

The other time when I was in Paris I finally had the time to visit the small shop of Pierre Hermé at Rive Gauche, St Germain. It was at that time when I got intrigued by hunting down what chocolate these world class chocolatiers were actually using. Previous efforts trying to demistify a Callebaut, Belcolade or Chocovic in chocolatier stores got me angry faces more than once
People queueing outside the street made clear where the action was. The store was looking gorgeous: small, clean, modern with a lot of sobrely designed wood putting all of the macarons and chocolate creations right in the centre of your attention. What caught my attention really were the prices! I don’t even dare to mention some of the ganache and truffles! On the shelves I spotted some bars including a “Origine Porcelana”, priced at a fat 10€. Wow, that is what I’d start to call really expensive stuff! I’ve bought Amedei at that price knowing that it was worth it, but here it was an investment for the truth. Turning towards a employee asking what the bar was made of, to my pleasant suprise he instantly revealed it was from Valrhona. I was struck by his open attitude as if he was used to answer the question. It even made me buy the overpriced Porcelana and some other bars to check out this Valrhona creation.

I don’t know what Hermé or Valrhona did wiht the bar, but I frankly was dissappointed. Where’s the taste gone, even the pacaking was rather cheap, with a bar coming wrapped in plastic foil. I had tasted much better Valrhona from their Plantation series in 2005 and 2006, but this one didn’t even come close to Porcelana As Magritte would say: ‘This is not a chocolate bar’. Lesson learned: if you want bars, buy bars from passionate bean-to-bar manufacturers.

The “Salon du Chocolat” goes around worldwide with famous fairs in New York, Tokyo, Beijing, even Moscow, and next week shows in Paris with a 4 day fair, from October 29th till November 2nd. A one-way cacao Valhalla, the ultimate theme park, or eventual deception… I’m haven’t really got a clear view about what to expect from the 2008 “Salon du Chocolat“.

It is hard to imagine entering the halls in Portes de Versailles, that has more than of 12.000m² to offer for chocoholics, cacaophiles, and aficionados. I only know I’m going one day out of four, for the first time, and the plan is to discover more about artisan & origin chocolate explorations. With a vast range of all known top chocolatiers and artisan brands present at the fair, there sure must be lots of fun to share with other people.

The Paris team for the Salon conducted an amusing survey together with Le Figaro/Madame, on the French and their chocolate habits. Some fun facts:

Men and women, everyone prefers dark chocolate (50%), followed by milk chocolate (35%) and white chocolate (15%).
Solitaire or social? 24% of men do not share their munches … against 22% of women. Shared with family, between lovers, then friends, chocolate however still remains primarily a pleasure that is offered to and experienced together.
41% of women believe that eating chocolate gives them more pleasure than making love …
In buying habits, respondents like to buy their chocolate in priority from small but high quality artisan chocolatiers (48%) and in a much lesser extent from big industrial brands (23%).

I’ve been spotting the 400+ participants list, which includes some 140 chocolatiers, and I’m glad to see a whole range of favourites in place: Domori, Lindt, La Maison du Chocolat, Maison Bonnat, Michel Cluizel, NewTree, Phillipe Pascoët, Pralus and the Belgian new Zaabär too.
Some others to discover are: Nestlé, De Bondt and Cacao Barry (from Meulan). I’ll also seek after bars from Dagoba, and USA brands like De Vries, Scharffen Berger, Guittard, and maybe TCHO, although none of these are listed with a stand. Big misses are Amedei, Valrhona and German brands like Coppeneur.

I’ll keep you posted with writings later on!
Any other brands you think of are worth checking out?