Amsterdam. Tony’s Chocolonely is a big noise here because this is where its business all started and where its HQ is based. Like many responsible chocolate manufacturers, it aims to make its chocolate slave-free. There are flavours available that you can’t get in the UK yet and I spend some time on a translation app trying to work out what is what.
Later that day I head to Puccini Bomboni, where the chocolates (‘our chocolates are seen more as dessert’) are massive and gorgeous and sold by the gram. The gianduja alone is palm-sized. I want to buy an assortment, but seeing the man in front of me spend €60 on what is scarcely 16 pieces, I settle on just one: a walnut square, thick with nutty ganache and crowned in chocolate curls.
Puccini’s walls are lined with boxes of prepacked chocolate products and there are mini flakes (‘bark’) in higher cocoa-content chocolate - something I’ve never before found on my travels. I buy a box, which, once tasted, has to be replenished. Before you hate me: Puccini ships abroad.
Walking home we spy a 300m queue outside a tiny shop: Van Stapele. It sells only one product: a Valrhona dark chocolate cookie with a white chocolate heart. Supplies are rationed to no more than seven per customer and they make only 3,000 a day: when they sell out they shut. There is a charming ‘minder’ on the door. We promise to try one if the queue ever shortens. On the last day, it does. We buy one and then immediately return for a glorious box of six.
