There is nothing I like better than chocolate and in the last decade or so, I've become a devotée of the dark chocolate that is so much more available in the U.S. than it once was. Even Hershey does dark chocolate these days.
But on a delicious tour of some of the great chocolate shops in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, I discovered that we just don't know the half of it. In spite of the renown of Belgian and Swiss chocolates in the U.S., France is really putting in a bid to become (and some would say it already is) the best country for chocolate in the world. And they talk about it just like wine: grand crus and paying attention to the terroir; whether or not one should mix beans (as one often mixes varieties of grapes to make wine); and so on.
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| Gosselin |
I'll give you all the details in this report so you can follow the tour yourself when you're next in Paris.
The tour began at Gosselin, 123-125 rue Saint-Honoré. Gosselin won the best baguette contest a year or two ago and makes a wide assortment of chocolates and pastries. From there we walked past the Passage Vero Daudet, the oldest in Paris, which is between the rue Boulol and the rue de Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The Coté de France chocolate shop at 25, rue de l'Opera was the next stop. The packaging of these yummy little bon bons was particularly attractive.
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| Chocolates from Le Coté de France |
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| Chocolates of Michel Cluizel |
The Normandy family of Michel Cluizel is gaining quite a reputation in the chocolate world as well. The shop we visited is located at 231 rue Saint-Honoré and I understand they've opened one in New York (don't miss it there if you can't come to Paris)!
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| Jean-Paul Hevin |
Finally, after tasting a palet d'or, a bite of opera cake, a bit of éclair, praline and ganache espolette at the successive shops we'd visited, we hauled our aching tummies to Jean-Paul Hevin at 231 rue St. Honoré where we were ushered upstairs to what I think of as one of the best kept secrets in Paris: a tea room where one can order
real hot chocolate. This chocolate has no condensed milk in it (an essential ingredient of milk chocolate and a part of every hot chocolate one finds in the U.S.). This chocolate comes in a chocolate pot just as it would have been served to France's aristocrats. In their day, chocolate was only known as a liquid and often not sweetened, but spiced with cinnamon or peppers (as the Aztecs did). And if one is an utter glutton for punishment, it is also possible to order pastries with chocolate as well. In short, a day of wretched excess -- which is the kind I like best:).
But sweet doesn't only apply to chocolate; it can also apply to candles and just the other day, I had the chance to join a private tour of Cire Trudon, 78 rue de Seine, a candle maker whose history dates back to 1643. In the days when ordinary candles were made from animal fat, which made them smelly, dirty and short-lived, Cire Trudon was making candles of bees wax for the royal court at Versailles and the great churches. When Louis XIV commissioned books to be created describing the processes and tools of each of France's domestic manufactories, it was the candle-making of Cire-Trudon that was used for the book, a copy of which is still in possession of the firm and which we had a chance to see. I found the picture of the 17th century machine that waxed the wicks particularly fascinating.
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| Cire-Trudon Candles |
Today, Cire-Trudon is probably best known for its scented candles and we were lucky to meet the perfumer who creates the scents. He is from Grasse, the world capital of perfume, and spoke only in French so I got just the gist of what he had to say. They no longer make candles exclusively of bees wax because it has its own scent and doesn't mix well with other fragrances. Today, their candles are a blend of materials (secret) and the recipes for the scents are closely guarded. We got to smell both the candles and the scent right out of the bottle of their balsam, mint, camelia, tuberose, and odalisque scents, the latter a combination of several citrus fruits and bergamot. It was a really extraordinary experience. If you were to walk down the street, you might walk right by, but do stop in if you get the chance. It is a marvelous experience: 78 rue de Seine, 75006.
But sweet doesn't only apply to chocolate; it can also apply to candles and just the other day, I had the chance to join a private tour of Cire Trudon, 78 rue de Seine, a candle maker whose history dates back to 1643. In the days when ordinary candles were made from animal fat, which made them smelly, dirty and short-lived, Cire Trudon was making candles of bees wax for the royal court at Versailles and the great churches. When Louis XIV commissioned books to be created describing the processes and tools of each of France's domestic manufactories, it was the candle-making of Cire-Trudon that was used for the book, a copy of which is still in possession of the firm and which we had a chance to see. I found the picture of the 17th century machine that waxed the wicks particularly fascinating. 
