The first thing I did upon arriving in town, after a 4-hour bus ride from the Netherlands, was begin visiting the best chocolate shops in Bruges. This is normally an activity reserves for after you’ve seen the requisite castles and museums, but, well, this pilgrimage was for one purpose: Belgian chocolate. A friend I interviewed …

“We have this motto… never ask your customer what they want, because they of course have no idea what they want. A customer, a consumer, a person on the street can only tell you what they already know.” -Julia Zotter, Creative Director at Zotter Chocolate Since 1995, Zotter Chocolate has been creating confections in southeastern …

The number of chocolate shops in Brussels is meant to astound. Most people will point you towards the most established Belgian chocolate shops in Brussels, like Leonidas, Mary’s, Godiva, and Planete, but historic doesn’t always mean good. Sometimes crappy products continue to thrive because every guide book is just recommending what all the others are. …

Apparently I look Dutch. This is the number one takeaway from my Amsterdam chocolate adventure, which took me to a few dozen chocolateries across the city. I found that most chocolate shops in Amsterdam are quite small, specializing in only chocolate, with no seating or other goodies to choose from. It’s grab, and then go. …

Unlike in coffee, the chocolate industry has relatively few large conferences open to the public. The industry is still quite secretive, except for one segment— craft. The specialty, or bean to bar chocolate industry is a subset which has built its customer base on the standard of transparency. So it only makes sense that one …

Not all chocolate is made in a factory, and not all the Willy Wonkas of the world are old white men. Some of them don’t even make chocolate. So who are these mysterious Charlie Buckets, who barely remember a world before “fine chocolate” and “cacao” were just basic vocabulary? With so many stories out there …

The end of the year is when most of us spend extra time with our families and relax after a long year. We look forward to the events the new year will bring, and enjoy life while it’s slow for a change. In celebration of coming together and looking towards the future, I’ve compiled a …

For some people (like yours truly), finding amazing chocolate in surprising places is reason enough to travel. But traveling for chocolate is not as simple as going to a different country to buy a Cadbury cream egg. In fact, despite the name, chocolate travel doesn’t always involve going to another country at all. Sometimes it just means having …

I’ll never forget my first taste of fresh cacao, sour and floral and so much sweeter than I had anticipated. I was so surprised at the bitterness that leaked out when I bit down, that I nearly spit it out. I’d been reviewing bean-to-bar chocolates alone for years, but had never consumed any form of raw …

Do you know the lifespan of your taste buds? They’re the little bumpy bits protruding from the surface of your tongue. You use them every day; it might seem like they grow with you. But they actually only stick around for about 10-14 days before they slough off to forge a new life down the …