Belgium is known for many things but I confess to being in it for the chocolate. My husband, on the other hand, has a thing for beer. It seemed to me that a highly rated chocolate and beer tour would be the perfect way to kick off our Belgian adventures. I was so right!
Chocopolis
The tour starts off at a chocolate store called Chocopolis where our amazing guide, Marie, explained to us some of the basics of chocolate making and the 2 types of chocolate stores in Belgium: the ones who process cocoa beans to make their own chocolate and the ones that source the chocolate from others. Chocopolis is the later but the other 3 shops we visited were the former. Besides the chocolate we sampled (made with chili and perhaps red pepper – you couldn’t taste the pepper but it left a heat in your mouth), my favorite part here was Marie explaining to us that almost all the chocolate in Bruges was shit which was quickly followed by an excuse my French line and a story about growing up in Paris with a French mother driving/parking in the city. Hilarious! Or at least I found it so and as this is my blog, that’s all that matters 😉
We went to 3 more chocolate stores. We tried so many different things throughout the tour as Marie encourages everyone to try new creations they wouldn’t otherwise sample – please refer to the previously mentioned chili chocolate.
More chocolate
The next place was a hole in the wall with AMAZING chocolate. My favorite here was the dark chocolate (surprise!) from… I wish I knew. We tried chocolate frame 3 different countries throughout the tour and this one was my favorite. Incredibly smooth. NOTE: Be cautious about accepting roasted cocoa beans! This was my least favorite sample of the tour. Some people apparently love them but I don’t believe anyone in our group did.
Regardless of looks, they were delicious!
Onward, to the Channel of chocolate stores (nickname stolen from Marie who may or may not have stolen it from someone else). We tried 3 chocolates here. One of the 3 country ones (Madagascar), an Earl Gray tea, and something similar to a kit cat. The Earl Gray was the most interesting. It was actually quite good but the aftertaste, being tea flavored, was not for me.
The last shop provided us with our last country chocolate (Venezuelan?) and the chocolate of our choice. I went with a fancy snickers option. A solid choice but the show stopper here was a hazelnut spread that is coming home with me to meet some future hot chocolate.
Thus ends the chocolate portion of the tour. Apparently Marie used to mingle the 2 but she found that people stopped listening to the chocolate information once they started drinking. I can’t imagine why :p
Doubles and triples
The first bar was my favorite. It’s in a re-purposed puppet theater which is cool but the best part was the bar cats!!! Yay cats! There was beer. It wasn’t my thing. I accidentally outed myself as not liking beer and Marie promised me wine for the rest of the evening. Score!
Second bar may not have been a bar? It really looked like a store only it was laid out with incredibly good presentation. Picture a library where the books are begging to be picked up and read. It’s like that but only with beer begging to be drunk. We had several tables upstairs. Marie would serve a beer, tell us about it while we sampled, then went off to prepare the next course. I truly mean course! We started with cheese as an accompaniment for the first beer, then we added bread and meat, the third beer was paired with a dark chocolate from one of our previous stops. True to her word, I got wine 🙂
Besides learning the difference between doubles and triples, the best part of this stop was the down time. While you would think that having your tour guide “abandon” you to go prepare the next course of food or drink would be a bad thing, it was actually quite awesome. We talked to each other! Stories were shared. Friendships struck. Good times!
Brothel face
The last bar was down a questionable alley. Somehow that became “brothel” and this is Sean’s “brothel” face lol. More fun times were had while religious figures surrounded us. I know we were in the oldest bar in Brussels but I don’t recall more. Marie bid us adieu from the formal part of the tour but invited us to join her and some friends at the bar next door. As we were all good friends by this time, we did, and a merry time was had by all!
