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Today is the official first day of Chocolate Week and now that Chocolate Unwrapped is over there is no official center for the event. For the next seven days Chocolate Week goes virtual with events scattered throughout the city at various locations including the shops of participating chocolatiers. My main chocolate-related goal for the day is to prepare for a pairing event hosted at the Westbourne Grove shop of Arisan du Chocolat.The event is called Sophisticated Pairings and is part of my work to extend the audience for chocolate tastings by embracing other gourmet foods. Chocolate and wine pairings are common as are chocolate and beer and chocolate and beer and cheese pairings. My sophisticated pairings session for this evening will include 8 different chocolate (plus the cocoa liquors of two of the chocolates), balsamic vinegars, artisan salts, olive oils, and cheeses and charcuterie. There will be none of the traditional elements of a chocolate tasting per se .The London day is bright and clear and cool and there is a full day of things to do ahead of me before the tasting can begin. My first objective was to find the food hall at Selfridges where I would buy the cheese and charcuterie. It's a simple matter to take the Piccadilly line from Earl's Court to Green Park then transfer to the Jubilee line to Bond Street where it takes only a few moments for me to orient myself and make my way to the bastion of British retail.Once inside it doesn't take long to find the food hall and the cheese display. I know that I want an aged Parmesan and luckily for me and for my guests there's a fresh-cut wheel of a thirty-month-aged specimen that should suit perfectly. New parmesans like the kind you get in most grocery stores are dense with one-dimensional and oversalted flavors but aged parmesans can be quite flaky with nuanced and delicate flavors.Harder is the next selection as I want a goat cheese that's not too goat-y. After a few moments and commiserating with the person serving me over the fact that the case is too cold to really be able to taste the cheeses I'm sampling I settle on a British goat's milk cheese called Ticklemore not too tangy or goat-y with a nice flaky texture.

Next I hit the charcuterie counter which is just steps from the cheese. There are loads of Italian and British specialties but I am looking particularly for bresaola, which is an air-cured beef, and a prosciutto. While there are a half-dozen choices in the prosciutto category (including an Iberico ham at 18 GBP per 100 grams (or about US$137/lb)) that I would love to select but it's way out of the price range for this event, there is only one bresaola choice an American wagyu beef bresaola at a more reasonable (but not really reasonable) price of 6.50 GBP per 100 grams. I need 15 slices which ends up being about 220 grams or nearly a half-pound which amounts to about US$25. Armed with the prosciutto, bresaola, and cheeses I pay for my purchases and head back out to Bond St to catch the tube to my first meeting of the day.Totally coincidentally, I was contacted just a few days before I was scheduled to leave for London by a book packager located in the Islington area (Angel tube) who was considering doing a book on chocolate and did I want to be considered for the project because they were heading for the Frankfurt book fair and wanted to promote the book to publishers? We had a lovely meeting and agreed to meet when I was back in London before returning home.From there it was a short walk along to Camden Passage off the Islington High Street to one of Paul A Young's shops. I already knew that it was closed on Mondays but I walked by to take a photo of the exterior.

Then it was back on the tube to Bayswater to drop off my loot from Selfridges at Artisan du Chocolat and take a look at the setup for the tasting before heading out to my afternoon meeting and shopping expedition.

Satisfied with all of the preparations I started walking from Westbourne Grove towards the Belgravia Square shop of Rococo where I had a late-afternoon meeting with founder Chantal Coady and Sara Jayne Stanes that I'd arranged well before I set out on the trip.

Chantal is probably the best-known figure on the London chocolate scene and Rococo has been in business for about 20 years. Chantal is the author of several books on the subject of chocolate and is one of the founders of the UK Academy of Chocolate. She may be best known for her campaign for Real chocolate chocolate that contains no added fats other than cocoa butter (one of her books is titled Real Chocolate).I made a huge directional error when I assumed I could walk from Bayswater to Belgravia because I was not careful to ensure that the two maps I printed out actually overlapped in the corner where I thought they did. So I got to the edge of one map and found myself, instead of the expected one street west of where I needed to be (Knightsbridge tube at the top of Sloane St), about two miles west of there at the High Street Kensington tube stop. Though it was in the midst of rush hour I was able to flag a cab and make it to the foot of Motcomb St (Rococo is at #5) just on 5:00. I was the first of my party to arrive only to discover that ChocolateLife member 'masur' (who is also a member of the Swedish Academy of Chocolate) was seated enjoying a late afternoon tea.Sara Jayne Stanes arrived shortly thereafter and we talked about how we started out in our respective Chocolate Lives. Sara was originally a documentary film and television commercial producer who was exposed to chocolate by chef Michel Roux during the course of producing one of her projects. That introduction in the very early 1990s piqued her interest in a way not all that different from my own. One difference however is that Sara was asked shortly thereafter to write a book on the subject and she soon found herself on cacao plantations in Mexico, among other places.When Chantal arrived the conversation turned to the evolution of the London chocolate scene, the differences between people's attitudes towards chocolate in the US and the UK, and about the Academy of Chocolate's awards and some of the differences between the Academy's perception of how they conduct the Awards and the perception by some of the public (and especially some members of the UK chocolate artisan chocolate community) that the Awards and judging process were not as transparent as they could be and needed to be.The conversation was accompanied by various beverages, and I opted for a hot chocolate. It was in the French style in the sense that it was bitter/dark and not at all sweet. Although the chocolate taste was fine, it was thinner than the consistency I prefer most.Because Chantal had arrived a few minutes late by the time this conversation was winding up it was getting very close to the time I was supposed to be back in Bayswater to set up for the class. At the last minute, however, I was invited to a short tasting of some their current pieces by their current chief chocolatier, Laurent. I asked him the question I normally ask in these situations, which is to pick three or four pieces that he felt best represented his approach to his work. The pieces arrived and my impression is that they were very well made in the classic French tradition but with flavors that were more forward and recognizable, putting them squarely in what I call Nouvelle American and that others call Modern French . One surprise was a layered piece with ganache and a quince pate de fruit (jelly). Quince is an underused fruit flavor in chocolate.I made my way from the shop in a rush as I needed to stop and get the last elements for the tasting beer. Fortunately there was a Waitrose at the bottom of Motcomb street and I popped in and bought some Guinness and Pilsner Urquell. Armed with these I was able to hail a cab and make it back to Artisan du Chocolat just a few minutes late.Setup took quite a while as we assembled 15 plates for the tasting, each with three different balsamic vinegars (a bulk organic balsamic vinegar purchased at Sainsbury's and two I brought from the US a 5-year aged balsamic from Manicardi, and one of my favorites, a balsamic condimento from a company called Villa Manodori); two olive oils (a bulk organic oil purchased at Sainsbury's and an organic artisan oil from Italy I brought from the US); two salts (a black Hawaiian salt and an Italian sea salt made in Bologna that is seasoned with garlic, black pepper, rosemary, and sage); the two cheeses and the bresaola and prosciutto from Selfridges; and a selection of 9 AdC chocolate bars (three origin chocolates Congo, Madagascar, and Bali - and the liquor from two of them (Congo and Bali), and four flavored chocolates mole, matcha, saffron, and tonka).

As participants waited for us to finish (it took some time to finish such an involved plating) they enjoyed one of the drink specialties of the house a take on the classic Bellini made with Prosecco and frozen cacao pulp replacing the traditional white peach puree.My tastings are never scripted and are often very wide-ranging in scope though I always have an idea where I want to start and where I want to end. In this case it was a little less scripted than normal because I was not as familiar with the chocolates as I like to be and because Gerard was also participating as a guest and as a presenter. This led for some lively interactions between the two of us as Gerard would clarify some specific points with respect to how AdC does things and the other participants had an opportunity to ask kinds of questions of Gerard directly which really added to the presentation.It is important to me to at this point step aside and say that my goal with this class was not to present pairings that I thought 'worked' to the participants. Each of us possesses our own sensory apparatus and perceive smells and tastes differently. Each of us also has our own preferences when it comes to tastes and textures so that what I really like, one of the guests may dislike intensely (and vice versa). Rather, the purpose of the tasting was to make people aware of the taste version of a concept I know of from my art school days about complementarity.Josef Albers is a famous artist known for, among many things, for his voluminous color field studies. In these he played with slight nuances in differences in hue, shade, tint, and other elements of color to see how colors that were juxtaposed affected our perception of those colors. If you ever do any of these yourselves (i.e., if you've ever painted your house), you know how your perception of a color can totally change when they are seen in conjunction with other colors.The same thing is true with taste except that it's more complicated because taste is also influenced by the sense of smell as well as the texture of a food and how it is eaten (chewed, left to melt/dissolve, etc). This idea affected the selection of items to be paired with the chocolates.The three different balsamic vinegars had differing levels of acidity both in the nose and on the tongue as well as different levels of sweetness. The black salt had a charcoal-y minerality and was real crunchy with a large variation in crystal size while the Bolgonese sea salt was quite herbaceous. The olive oils showed similar variation with the bulk being quite timid and the artisan oil quite grassy with a peppery bite.After talking a little bit about the history of the Bellini and Prosecco (I am on record as saying that it is one of my favorite beverages for pairing with chocolate and I think it is one of the most versatile wines for pairing in general) it was on to the tasting part of the evening's activities.A blow-by-blow description of the pairings would be at least as long as the presentation itself so I don't think that that approach will work here. While it is easy for most people to imagine the taste of salt and chocolate or vinegar and chocolate or even cheese and chocolate, it's a little harder to imagine wrapping a small piece of chocolate in a piece of prosciutto or bresaola. For me, it's moving in this unexpected (and unexpectedly interesting) direction that is keeping chocolate tasting fresh. What is most interesting to me about these particular combinations is the role texture plays in the pairing.The prosciutto, for some reason, has a tendency to hide the flavors of whatever it is paired with compared with the bresaola. Both are a little salty and the prosciutto has more fat, but as was demonstrated with the olive oils, fat is a good medium for distributing flavor to it would be natural to assume that a fattier prosciutto lead to better flavor perception but in practice (at least in this case, with this prosciutto) it doesn't.

These photos of the Founders of Cleveland's Sweetest Day were first published on page two of the Sweetest Day Section in The Cleveland Plain Dealer on October 8, 1922.The images show the photos of the 12 Candymakers who "Arranged the Details of The Sweetest Day in the Year and Planned It's Success." The Candymakers' names are (from left to right) C.R. Canter, A.E. Barton, R.T. Fuller, J.J. Wilsdon, R.H. Sheehan, W.A. Katzenmeyer, A.A. Sarouch, Louis Hahn, W.J. Nichols, C.C. Hartzell (chairman of the "Sweetest Day in the Year Committee"), L. Narwood, and L.E. Gruber. The caption at the top of the page reads: "Eat Candy as a Portion of Your Daily Meal and Enjoy the Best of Health." The sub-headline below the caption reads: "Cleveland Committeemen Who Arranged the Details of the Sweetest Day of the Year and Planned It's Success." Under the photos of the Founders of Sweetest Day is an article written by The Commissioner of Health from New York City, Royal S. Copeland M.D. (later U.S. Senator from New York). The article is entitled "Eat Candy As Part Of Meal And Be Happy." Below the headline is a caption which reads: "Love of Sweets is an Inborn Instinct, and Craving Should be Satisfied, Since Nature Expresses Her Bodily Needs Through Demands of the Stomach."Also on page two of the Cleveland Plain Dealer's October 8th, 1922 Sweetest Day Section are Sweetest Day advertisements for 12 companies, which include: The Edward M. Becker Candy Company, The Euclid Candy Company, MacKenzie's Candy Company, The Hoffman Ice Cream Company, DeKlyn's Chocolates, Winger's Cut Rate Drug Store, The Wm. M. Hardie Candy Company (Two Factories in Cleveland), The Kelly Peanut Company, The Max Glick Candy Company, Standard Drug Stores (sixteen locations), and Troughton's Sugar Jar Candies.Digital scan courtesy of The Cleveland Public Library. Sweetest Day is an observance celebrated primarily in the Great Lakes region and parts of the Northeast United States on the third Saturday in October. Once known as a day to spread love and cheer to the unfortunate, this popular holiday in the northern U.S. is now known as a day to show affection to the man in your life. It is described by Retail Confectioners International as an "occasion which offers all of us an opportunity to remember not only the sick, aged and orphaned, but also friends, relatives and associates whose helpfulness and kindness we have enjoyed."Sweetest Day has also been referred to as a "concocted promotion" created by the candy industry solely to increase sales of candy.ContentsThe twelve Cleveland committeemen who planned Cleveland's Sweetest Day, as published in The Cleveland Plain Dealer on October 8, 1922.Although it is rumored that the holiday was begun by Hallmark during the recession of 1982, a happier story of the origin of Sweetest Day is frequently attributed to candy company employee Herbert Birch Kingston as an act of philanthropy. However, Bill Lubinger, a reporter for The Plain Dealer, contends that "Dozens of Cleveland's top candy makers concocted the promotion 84 years ago and it stuck, although it never became as widely accepted as hoped." The Cleveland Plain Dealer's October 8, 1921 edition, which chronicles the first Sweetest Day in Cleveland, states that the first Sweetest Day was planned by a committee of 12 confectioners chaired by candymaker C. C. Hartzell. The Sweetest Day in the Year Committee distributed over 20,000 boxes of candy to "newsboys, orphans, old folks, and the poor" in Cleveland, Ohio. The Sweetest Day in the Year Committee was assisted in the distribution of candy by some of the biggest movie stars of the day including Theda Bara and Ann Pennington.There were also several attempts to start a "Sweetest Day" in New York City, including a declaration of a Candy Day throughout the United States by candy manufacturers on October 8, 1922. In 1927, The New York Times reported that "the powers that determine the nomenclature of the weeks of October" decreed that the week beginning on October 10, 1927 would be known as Sweetest Week. On September 25, 1937, The New York Times reported under Advertising News and Notes that The National Confectioners Association had launched a "movement throughout the candy industry" to rank Sweetest Day with the nationally accepted Mother's Day, Father's Day, and St. Valentine's Day. In 1940, another Sweetest Day was proclaimed on October 19. The promotional event was marked by the distribution of more than 10,000 boxes of candy by the Sweetest Day Committee. The candy was distributed among 26 local charities. 225 children were given candy in the chapel at the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children on October 17, 1940. 600 boxes of candy were also delivered to the presidents of the Jewish, Protestant and Catholic Big Sister groups of New York.Sweetest Day now largely involves giving small presents such as greeting cards, candy, and flowers to loved ones. While it is not as large or widely observed as Valentine's Day, it is still celebrated in parts of the United States, despite persistent allegations of being a "Hallmark holiday."Retail Confectioners International describes it as "much more important for candymakers in some regions than in others (Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo being the biggest Sweetest Day cities)". In 2006, Hallmark marketed 151 greeting card designs for Sweetest Day. American Greetings marketed 178.

Tuesday, October 13 The weather in London finally lived down to its reputation on the Tuesday I am scheduled to take a late-morning Eurostar from St Pancras London to the Gare du Nord in Paris for the Salon du Chocolat. After the hotel's quaint excuse for a breakfast (brown toast except there was no brown toast again), brown (bran) flakes, orange "juice," and instant "coffee," I shouldered my bags and descended into the London Underground during the height of rush hour .The trip from Earl's Court to St Pancras (also known as King's Cross) is all done on the Piccadilly line requiring no transfers for which I am thankful because the walk from one part of a station to another can be compared to a mini-marathon at times. There is construction going on in the London Underground and I am once again thankful that when they decide to close an escalator it's always a down escalator so at least I don't have to trudge up the equivalent of nine flights of stairs to ascend from the Underground.

An escalator at St Pancras, London Underground Reaching the top and the way out it's not all that far to the Eurostar ticket office where there is no line and the ticket office is itself only a few meters from border security (after all we are going to be leaving the UK and entering the EU) and entry into the very modern boarding area.Where I am able to finally get a real cup of coffee. (When you're in London there are Starbucks everywhere. Skip them for the local chain Caffe Nero; better coffee and better prices.)

Presentation of a cafe latte at Caffe Nero Boarding starts right on the minute and I find my seat happy to find that the adjacent and facing seats (I asked for a row with a table) were all empty and so I could spread out. We leave on time and are soon hurtling south through the fog-shrouded English countryside at a pace that I am sure astonishes whatever livestock remains within mooing distance of the tracks. First and next-to-last stop is Ashford International to pick up passengers and even though the seat next to me is booked, the rows in front and behind are empty and my row-mate is not as keen on needing a table as I was so he moves to an unoccupied row knowing that he will be the only occupant the rest of the way to Paris.We slip out of Ashford on time. There is some sound of our passage; a low whooshing rumble of white noise that is hypnotically soothing. The ride is smooth and the fog and low cloud cover ensure that there is no drama in the landscape to attract my attention. And even though I need to write a blog entry about my Monday in London I am very tired and I rationalize that it can easily wait until I get to the hotel in Paris. So I succumb to sleep's siren call, waking on the outskirts of what others call The City of Light and I call The City of Chocolate.The Gare du Nord has the look of the quintessential European train station made legendary in hundreds of movies. The only thing that is lacking is the clacking noise made by the old-fashioned mechanical signboards used to indicate destinations, tracks, and times. I think to myself that it is one of those improvements of modern technology that leaves the world a little poorer.

The Gare du Nord One of the things I did before I left New York was to download an app for my iPhone for the Paris Metro. I have already determined that I need to take Line 4 from Gare du Nord to Montparnasse - Bievenue and change to Line 12 to get to Porte de Versailles where the Salon du Chocolat is being held. I've been lucky to get a great deal (109 Euros a night) on a hotel that's about a 50 meter walk from the exit from the Metro and right across the street from the Porte de Versailles. The exhibition hall where the Salon is being held is about the same distance away from the Metro exit in the other direction.I check in to discover that the room, though small, is spacious compared to the room I had in London and I even have a small balcony with a window that opens out onto it (the view is of the expo center - but it is a view). There is no closet, only a very small armoire with four hangars, two of them broken. There are no drawers to put anything in and I have to move things around to open the window to go out on the balcony. There is WiFi at no extra charge (though I had to ask specially for a room where I could reach a signal nothing beyond the second floor). I consider myself lucky that I can connect.After spreading my stuff over virtually every flat surface in the room I head over to the Hall to see about picking up my press credentials. This is the day before the show begins and even though I can see people inside setting up there is no access to anyone who is not an exhibitor. So I go back to my room and get ready to head towards the Latin Quarter to meet Matthew Stevens of Dessert Professional magazine (I am reporting on the show for the magazine) for dinner. I reverse my trip of earlier, getting off one stop short - at Odeon - and start walking towards the bd St Michel along the bd St Germain. I orient myself, find Matthew's hotel, and because I am early I start wandering the neighborhood for the first time in far, far too long.Paris is a great city for walking and this area (the 5th and 6th arrondisements ) is among my absolute favorites to explore (the Marais on the right side of the Seine is another). I cross through the Place St Michel and walk along the rue Saint-Andr des Arts past the market back to the bd St Germain and then head downriver in the direction of the Eiffel Tower.

Some of what was on sale at the open air fruit/veg market at the corner of rue Saint-Andr des Arts, rue du Seine, and rue Buci Just past Odeon is the rue Bonaparte and at the corner of the plaza is the restaurant Les Deux Magots, one of the more famous destinations for most tourists coming to Paris. However, if you face Les Deux Magot with your back to the church (St Germain-des-Pres), two short blocks to your right is a Laduree, one block further along the bd St Germain is Cafe de Flore (home of some of the better hot chocolate in Paris), and two blocks to your left along rue Bonaparte before you reach St Sulpice is the main boutique of Pierre Herme; behind you on the bd St Germain the way back to St Michel is one of the two Patrick Roger boutiques in Paris. This just might be the epicenter of French chocolate. Basking in the last rays of the evening sun I think to myself that I am glad to be back and that it really doesn't get much better than this.

Les Deux Magots

Laduree at the corner of rue Bonaparte and rue Jacob

Cafe de Flore on the bd St Germain

The Pierre Herme shop on rue Bonaparte almost always has a queue

St Sulpice

Patrick Roger boutique on bd St Germain

The Cacao et Chocolat boutique on the rue Buci - not one of the greats but the new look (the third in about ten years) is eye-catching But there's no time to stop and smell (or eat) the chocolate. I walk back towards St Michel and head away from the river towards the Sorbonne and the Pantheon. At the top of rue Soufflot with your back to the Pantheon in front of you is the Jardin du Luxembourg (there is a Dallayou close at hand) and in the distance over the rooftops you can just make out the spire of the Eiffel Tower.Dinner can be a confusing choice in Paris as there is so much to choose from. Though it is very difficult to get a truly bad meal in Paris it is very easy to get a truly unexceptional one. I do not plan to regale you meal-by-meal and I only plan to mention exceptional food experiences during the rest of my trip. This evening's meal is at Relais de l'Entrecte where they ask us only one question when we sit down, "How do you like (your steak) cooked?" It's not bad - but it's not memorable - and also a little unexpected as I was forced to make the choice to abandon my recent fairly strict vegetarianism a tad earlier than expected. Wednesday, Oct 14 Wednesday morning dawns bright and clear and I am out of the hotel early. Too early it turns out. The consumer portion of the Salon does not open until 10:00am and the doors do not open to the press until then either.

There is a professional Salon whose doors open at 9:30 but (confusingly) the only sign for the press office points to the entrance to the consumer salon and there is no obvious person or place to go to get information. I eventually find out that I must register as a professional visitor to gain entrance into the professional Salon in order to go to the professional Press desk to get my press badge. Once I figure this out I am only a few moments from walking the show. (It turns out that there is a separate press office for the consumer show but registering at either gave one access to both.)For me, this trip is a lot about reaching out and making connections. And not just making connections with people I know though that is certainly extremely important. As there was very little information I could find on the web sites for any of the festivals I was attending I really had no idea exactly who would and would not be there beyond a very small group of people I had contacted or who had contacted me before I left the States.All of my thoughts and photos on the Salon du Chocolat itself in the next post.

For those in Germany, or within drving distance, the 2nd Paderborn Chocolate Festival opens Thursday night Oct 22 with a VIP reception in the town hall. The show runs then from Friday through Sunday. Last year's event welcomed over 20 000 visitors. This event is a showcase of german chocolate and this year features musical performances, chocolate sculpture, photography and fashion. I will be in attendance and will report "von ort" as we say in Germany. Live on the ground! If any one will be in Paderborn for the event let me know and we can meet up and exchange truffels! cheers, Warren http://www.paderborn.de/microsite/schokofestival/programm.php?p=0 UPDATE:approximately 100 people attended the vernissage of the festival in the city hall. organiser Reinhard Schwarz did an amazing job of pulling the festival together for the second year. we drove the three hours from bremen in the pouring rain, but enjoyed a great evening! the festival goes all weekend so if you are in the area do drop by!

There is a lot to like about London but hotels are not one of those things.The hotel that is hosting Chocolate Unwrapped The May Fair has a very nice lobby with a happening lobby bar scene at night. I suppose you could call it a boutique hotel. And I am sure that the rooms are very nice, but I am equally sure that they are quite small for what they cost. And that's the dilemma of hotels in London. In the US in most cities I can go to a budget hotel brand and even for a modest price (under US$100/night and often far less), be guaranteed that my room will measure at least 100 sf, have a separate full bath, and most likely have cable TV with at least 1 premium channel. In the UK, you'd have to pay at least 200GBP (about US$320 at the current exchange rate) for the same amenities.Even with the generosity of ChocolateLife members, spending that sort of money on hotel rooms on this trip was not in the budget. So I opted for a budget hotel in Earl's Court just a few steps from the Earl's Court Tube stop on the Piccadilly line. While I was expecting a shared-everything experience, the hotel lived down to expectations by also including one of the hardest mattresses I have ever had the displeasure of trying to sleep on and maid service that could only generously be called slapdash with poorly made beds, towels not replaced each morning, and no replacement bar of miniscule soap. The included breakfast provided the option of brown toast and white toast (though brown bread (not wheat bread and there is an important distinction there) was not available two of the three mornings), corn flakes and brown flakes (bran flakes), instant coffee or tea, and the miserable vaguely orange-flavored juice-like substance that passes for orange juice.What a way to start a day. Not .However the place was very inexpensive (39 pounds a night) for London and it was very convenient as most of what I wanted to do including getting to an from the airport was easily accessible from a stop on the Piccadilly line.Sunday dawned cloudy and miserable and left the hotel with well-deserved haste. I walked the 50 or so meters down Warwick Rd past the Earl's Court Exhibition Center to the Earl's Court tube stop and descended into the London Underground. A few minutes and a few tube stops later I popped up at Green Park which is right on Piccadilly Rd across the street from the Ritz.

The Ritz's famous lightbulb signs at night .There's a story to be told about the Ritz at night shot that starts in the US where I downloaded a photography app for my iPhone. The app is the one that was used to take the 2x2 photos used in these blog posts.A new member of TheChocolateLife is Warren Laine-Naida British-born Canadian artist currently living in Germany. In addition to being a world traveler, Warren is a practicing visual artist a sculptor using chocolate as a primary medium with experience in the food world currently working as the web master for a private university. He is also a part-owner of a bookstore in in suburban Toronto. My kind of guy.Warren and I met almost immediately upon my arrival at Chocolate Unwrapped on Saturday and discovered very quickly that we were kindred (vagabond) spirits. We agreed to rendezvous after the close of the show to talk. I ended up returning to my hotel to check in and clean up after a fashion, check out the claim of free WiFi access in the rooms (turned out to be true), and check in to see if there was urgent e-mail. I had intended to take a nap, too, but the bed (very hard) and a pillow that can only be described as underachieving thwarted my efforts to sleep. Incredibly, I would have to be a lot more tired than I was.After learning that we would have needed to shout ourselves to hoarseness to take an overpriced drink in the May Fair bar, Warren and I went around the corner to The Clarence on Dover St for a pint or three. Below are two shots of what I ordered the first taken when I placed the order for the first pint and the second when I placed the order for the third. Whee! (Well, I figured, it would also help me sleep.)

{hard segue} Earlier, while waiting for Warren I walked around the neighborhood. One block over from the Clarence is Old Bond St which is filled with name stores. Just a bit further along is Upper St James and between there and the short walk to Piccadilly Circus you'll find the London home of La Maison du Chocolat and Laduree.{end of digression} Sunday morning at Chocolate Unwrapped was just as busy as Saturday afternoon and I managed to spend time talking with Keith Hurdman the master Chocolatier for Thornton's. In one of several very-small-world experiences it turns out that New York chocolatier Rachel Zoe Insler (Bespoke Chocolates) worked with Keith. Thornton's is a large fish in the smallish pond that is high-end UK chocolates and I enjoyed tasting several of their bars especially the Tonka bar. Tonka is a bean that is illegal in the US because it contains coumarin (which is used as a precursor in the anti-coagulant warfarin (among others). It is often used as an inexpensive (though inexact) substitute for vanilla, and the Thornton's bar had not only a clear Tonka flavor (which is actually closer to new-mown hay) but also some very appealing warm spice notes.

Also present at Chocolate Unwrapped was Leeds-based newcomer to the UK chocolate scene Lauden Chocolatier. Lauden's founding chocolatier Sun Trigg is entirely self-taught. Of the pieces I tried, the one that stood out was the Lemon, made using fresh lemon juice. The lemon flavor was bright and clear and intense, lacking only the acidity of lemon juice itself. The packaging is also uniquely attractive, clear lucite boxes. They're just entering their second holiday season barely more than a full year old and the future appears to be just as bright as their flavors.

At this point of the day it was time to head to the Charing Cross tube station to catch a suburban rail train to Ashford in Kent. There I would meet with Gerard Coleman the chocolatier for Artisan du Chocolat AdC) and Anne Weyns, his partner and ChocolateLife member. The purpose was to tour the factory and taste chocolate in advance of the Sophisticated Pairings tasting program I was conducting on Monday night. I'd brought with me from New York a selection of balsamic vinegars and artisan salts as well as an olive oil. We'd taste these as well as items purchased in London but first we needed to taste what I brought against AdC's chocolate bars. I was also looking forward to visiting their production facility.

The production facility did not disappoint and it was an example of how it is possible to combine modern manufacturing techniques with handwork to create work that still deserves to be called artisan. Because AdC sells to several very large accounts, they were required to implement food safety procedures that most small companies would find crushingly onerous. Rather than shy from these requirements, AdC have used the experience to become better chocolate makers (Norman Love has the same thing to say about his work on G for Godiva).AdC is also a very unusual chocolatier because they make a very large percentage of the chocolate they use from liquor. They have a 300kg refiner-conche and they use it in unconventional ways to give them greater control over the final product than most chocolatiers have. For example they make a matcha green tea chocolate bar. They add the tea leaves into the refiner-conche using the ball mill to grind the tea leaves as the chocolate is being refined. Not only is the chocolate an unusually wonderful color but the taste of the tea comes through with a clarity that is missing when the tea is added to an already finished chocolate. More on AdC in the next post as I will be covering the tasting class.I arrived in Kent shortly after 5pm and caught the 9pm train back to London. By the time I made it back to Earls Court and the hotel around 11 (via Piccadilly tube - see below) even the very hard bed could not keep me from quickly falling asleep.

The whole Idea of Chocolate Week in the UK has been to build awareness for the growing artisan and high-end chocolate world in the UK (not just London) and drive foot traffic into the stores rather than taking people out of their workshops during the busy holiday production season and gathering them all together in one place for the public to parade in front of.This year the organizers decided to add a small trade show component to Chocolate Week Chocolate Unwrapped - as a way to officially mark the start of the week and to see if they could attract a different audience. Unwrapped was a small (about 20 exhibitors) tabletop show that included a small chocolate art exhibit and a series of lectures and tasting presentations. Tickets were sold to sessions that two-and-a-half hours, more than long enough to see and taste everything.For me it was like being a kid in a candy store except I didn't have to pay. I believe I was the only journalist from North America attending and I may have been the only journalist from outside the UK to cover the show. Taken entirely unto itself, Unwrapped did not warrant traveling all the way from the US to see it. However, the UK chocolate scene has seen tremendous growth in the past five years and there are many people I have known and known of for quite some time that I have never actually met.People like Martin Christy, who in addition to being the founder of seventypercent.com, one of the oldest chocolate review sites (I started corresponding with Martin shortly after starting chocophile.com back in 2001) is also highly involved in the Academy of Chocolate. The Academy had a table at Unwrapped and Martin was sharing his passion and enthusiasm with chocolate to a large number of attendees and even arranged a live interview with cacao growers in Ecuador via Skype which was pretty cool.

Martin Christy, editor of seventypercent.com .Another person I've needed to meet was Sara Jayne Stanes. Sara wrote a very early book on chocolate (1994 or thereabouts) and in addition to having been awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) for her work with food over many years is also heavily involved with the Academy of Chocolate. I had already scheduled a meeting with her for Monday with Chantal Coady of Rococo, but Sara was giving a lecture on cacao and chocolate in Mexico so I sat in even though I was more than a little groggy from the flight and feared that if I sat down in a comfortable chair in a warm and slightly darkened room I might immediately nod off. Thankfully I did not embarrass myself that way. One of the key takeaway points for me of the talk was Sara's use of the word tastewashed to describe how most people's palates have conditioned away from appreciating fine chocolate.

Sara Jayne Stanes, OBE Though small, the exhibit did contain a mini Who's-Who of the London chocolate world including Melt, Sir Hans Sloane (helmed by US-born Bill McCarrick), Rococo, Artisan du Chocolat, Paul A Young, and Paul Wayne Gregory. Notable newcomers included Lauden and DeAngelis.Brighton-based Choc Chick is a relatively new company onto the scene specializing in raw chocolate and offering in addition to a small line of bars and truffles a small kit containing bags of cocoa powder and cocoa butter plus a small bottle of agave syrup and instructions on how to reconstitute the ingredients to make raw chocolate bars at home.

Melt Chocolates , headquartered in London's Notting Hill, is one of the names that gets mentioned in any discussion of the top chocolatiers in the UK. They still do everything by hand and take a spare but elegant approach to packaging. Ganaches are quite wet (so very short shelf life) and should you visit them don't pass up their hand-wrapped dissolve-in-the-mouth caramels, either the chocolate or the sea-salt varieties.

Samples of Melt's bar boxes .

More Melt .Sir Hans Sloane is a rather well-known figure in London and was involved in the cacao trade early on, which is one of the reasons why Bill McCarrick and his partners chose to name their company after him. I think many Americans would know the London landmark Sloane Square, which was named for Sir Hans. Among other things, they are known for being one of the first chocolatiers in the UK to start making their own chocolate (they have a 50kg Netzsch ChocoEasy). Bill described to me the simple technique used to make their drinking chocolate product: they pan demerara sugar crystals. Simple, straightforward, yet remarkably elegant and they can also be eaten, not just melted into hot milk.

Bill McCarrick, chocolatier

Another relatively new company is headed by a veteran of the European chocolate industry, DeAngelis chocolates. Founded by Rocco DeAngelis, the company makes and sells a modern interpretation of traditional Modican (Sicily) chocolate. Steeped in history using techniques not all that different from those employed hundreds of years ago, Modican-style chocolate is grainy and coarse and crunchy from the very large size of the sugar crystals. DeAngelis has modernized this style by refining the sugar to a far greater degree. The result still has the light/open/airy/sandy texture of Modican chocolate, but without the crunch. There are five flavors in all, all made from the same base chocolate with added flavors and inclusions. The melt profile is very clean and, from my tasting there are two standouts the almond and the pistachio bars. Like all of the chocolate mentioned here these are not available in the US yet.

Rocco DeAngelis

London's chocolate scene is graced with two Pauls Paul A Young and Paul Wayne Gregory . Mr Gregory is a gregarious Jamaican and his approach to his chocolate is as open and gregarious as he is personally. Simple enrobed ganache rectangles, minimally decorated, that deliver strong, bright, clear, recognizable classic flavors with a strong chocolate finish in attractive packaging.

Paul Wayne Gregory

Red-headed-and-bearded and bespectacled Paul A Young is something of the enfant terrible of London chocolatiers for the moment. After all, it does take a certain level of confidence if not hubris - to produce a Marmite truffle. Now even though I lived in New Zealand for several years in my youth and have Australian relatives, I have never warmed to that peculiar culinary delight (and I use the term very loosely) known as Vegemite. Though legions of fans engage in raging debates about the relative merits of Vegemite over Marmite (and vice-versa), I have never been convinced of the evolutionary necessity of caring enough to be able to tell the difference between the two let alone choose sides. Though there it was the Marmite truffle. I can tell you that eating Marmite this was by far the most enjoyable Marmite experience I have ever, well, experienced. I am glad I ate it but I don't know that I would order a box for anyone but a Marmite lover (or to annoy a Vegemite aficionado). Nonetheless, the piece itself was impeccably made and the fit and finish on everything else I saw displayed the same level of competence and panache. PA Young is also currently the sole distributor of TCHO chocolate in the UK.

Yes, you are reading the card correctly - those are Marmite truffles .Also present were newcomers Lauden, standby Thornton's, and Rococo and Artisan du Chocolat the latter two given short shrift here because I will be spending more time with them before I leave London and the former two because today is a busy day filled with meetings with a packager interested in my assistance on a book project and with Sara Jayne Stanes and Chantal Coady, followed by a pairings class with Gerard Coleman at Artisan du Chocolat. Along the way I have to do some ingredients shopping for the class. It looks to be a beautiful Monday here in London. Bright clear-blue sky and cool at the moment (10C or 50F) reaching all the way to 15C (about 60F) at the warmest part of the day. I will be back at the keyboard this evening after class.

Day 1 - October 9, 2009It's 6:00pm and I am finally in the air en-route to London via Toronto. I left for the airport earlier than I normally would have because it's the Friday of a holiday weekend (Columbus Day here in the US; the connection to chocolate is that Columbus was the first known European to see cacao off the coast of the island of Guanaja on his third voyage to the New World in 1503 it's Thanksgiving weekend in Canada) and I expected traffic out to La Guardia airport to be heavier than normal and I expected the crowds at the airport getting away for the long weekend to be larger than normal.Of course, there wasn't any traffic and there were no crowds at the check-in and no line at security. I don't know if this is a good omen or not. I am glad that there is no stress actually making the flight but at the same time I am very short of sleep and it was really tough staying awake during the long wait - even in the hubbub of the airline terminal. The main terminal at La Guardia is Terminal B and the Air Canada gates are at the far end of Concourse A. I wait among passengers disgruntled at the delays on their flights, among the shopworn seats and walls, wastebaskets overflowing with crinkled cellophane sandwich wrappings, empty water bottles, and paper hot cups in many sizes once filled with coffee; some lipstick-stained, a furtive-bright flash of color escaping an otherwise drab Denali of trash.Surprisingly, the inbound plane I am catching to Toronto Pearson International en route to London Heathrow arrives close on time. After a short delay to clean the most obvious evidence of occupation by the incoming passengers my flightmates and I impatiently queue up to reaffirm our identities to the gate agent and provide evidence that we are, in fact, entitled t board the plane. Although the plane is nearly full, the middle seat next to me is empty; an unanticipated but very welcome state of affairs. Another very welcome amenity awaits on the seat back. I am not talking about the interactive entertainment system no, the geek in me is truly impressed that every seat on the plane has both a USB charging outlet and a standard household mains outlet. No worrying about batteries dying in mid-flight, I instead worry if this is an amenity of all Air Canada planes or just Airbus planes as my flight from Pearson to Heathrow is courtesy of Boeing.

The flight takes off more than thirty minutes after we push back from the gate,this is after all LaGuardia so there is nothing unusual except that those of us on the left-hand side of the aircraft are treated to a dramatic sky.

By the time we arrive in Toronto the clouds have begun to shed moisture at a rate that can only be described as torrential with water sluicing down the windows. I have ninety minutes until the flight to London takes off and I am not looking forward to passing through customs and immigration until I discover that because I am in transit and my bags were checked through from New York to London I fit into a special category which normally is a bad thing when it comes to air transportation these days. In this case however it means I get to jump to the front of a very short line by being escorted through a special door to an area containing exactly two people one immigration and customs agent and me. I present my boarding pass for my London flight and I am on my way to my gate in under three minutes.It takes me longer to reach my gate.In a marvel of transportation efficiency Flight 848 from Toronto to London starts boarding on time and we end up pushing back on time. I say a silent thank you to the transport gods when I discover both the USB charger and the AC outlet in my seat back. With my next breath I curse those same gods when I find out that the seat next to me is occupied by a five-month old. I can only think that the odds are good that this is going to be a very, very, very long night.That turns out not to be the case as the young lady demonstrated exemplary behavior by quickly falling asleep and only waking up once during the flight to cry. Morning comes much sooner than I have any right to expect.Although the public transportation system in the NY area is one of the best in the country, it pales in comparison to the London Tube. As I arrive at 8:30 am and I can't check into my hotel until at least 2:00 I decide to go straight to the event kicking off UK Chocolate Week, a trade-show-style exhibit called Chocolate Unwrapped in the May Fair Hotel just a scones throw from the Ritz. It turns out that I can get on the Piccadilly line at Terminal 3 at Heathrow and take it all the way to Green Park tube station, the tube stop closest to the hotel where I check my bags at the bell desk before heading downstairs to the Crystal Ballroom the home of Chocolate Unwrapped .

There is a Chocolate Festival Event today in Belmont on Alameda de las Pulgas - north of Ralston - looking forward to hearing reports about it!

It took me a whole week to find the time to get to this blog and I'm still waiting for Tom to email me the pictures (he's in Indonesia again) but our tour of Tcho last week was so special that I want to share it. John Kehoe is Tcho's sourcing director. He and Tom met about 5 years at a Fair Trade conference, and in the year and a half that he's been with Tcho, we've been meaning to go up and visit him. Last Saturday, after a long day of handing out samples at a trade show for green builders, we joined John for a late afternoon tour of the amazing facilities at Tcho.The name Tcho is a combination of "tech" and "chocolate" and that's what exactly what Tcho is . From the elegant computeresque design of the packaging to the marvelously creative lab to the slick factory, Tcho is about combining the best of technology with the best of chocolate. Their bars are even shaped like small CDs and come in a case.John's job is to travel around the world connecting with growers and working with them, setting up and using mini-labs that include all the equipment needed to assess growing conditions, test beans, and make chocolate, in order to have not only the best possible beans, but also to create balanced, respectful relationships with the growers. It's direct trade at its best.Tcho is on Pier 17 on the Embarcadero in San Francisco. There are plans for a much bigger retail area, but right now, there's a tiny shop at the front, off to the side of the main building. When we arrived at 4 PM, it was packed. John got me a great cup of mocha and Tom an espresso. We'd been by before to taste - they run taste tests based on their four basic tastes (and bars), nutty, fruity, citrus and chocolatey, all the time - so this time John took us back through the office to the lab, and how cool was that!Beans are processed, cut into microscopic slivers and sorted by different criteria. Elaborate databases store, and compare and contrast the data in different ways. Amazingly, the cacao farmers John visits in the remotest regions have access to the same database via satellite. Their labs are mini-versions of the one at Tcho.But it's too nice a day to finish this story now. I guess I'll have to tell it in parts - and maybe Tom's pictures will show up by the next time I have a minute to sit down.

About Home Chocolate Party (tm): Founded in 2005/2006At every Home Chocolate Party (tm) we begin by discussing where cacao grows. We will discuss how heirloom cacao trees are protected and how the location of the trees and its fruit effect flavor. We answer questions such as: Who grows the cacao? Who harvests it? What is the process from bean to bar?Once we've located the origins of cacao for our guests, we move on to the players who magically transform beans into luxurious chocolate. Here we answer questions such as: What type of equipment is needed? How is it made? How long does it take? How does it get to stores?We also answer questions such as: What happened in the past? Who discovered cacao and chocolate? Our guests listen to fascinating century old stories of chocolate while tasting samples.When background and questions are answered, we move into our demonstration. Guests are invited to participate in a hands-on workshop based on the Home Chocolate Party (tm) theme. Everyone has time to visit, shop and place orders. The happy group munches and marvels over chocolate, while the HCP Specialist politely exits to leave a very satisfied gathering of choco-partiers!