Paris Day 1: Best Chocolate in the World

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Please refer to our special page A Guide to the Best Chocolate in the World for a more thorough list of the chocolatiers we recommend throughout the United States and world.

A Perspective Guide to Chocolate

In following from our New York trip where we visited (but did not properly detail in this blog) a number of French chocolatiers, I decided to prepare another such trip in the obvious capital of French chocolate, Paris. Anyone who knows anything about chocolate knows Godiva is Belgian garbage wrapped in an expensive gold box. Forget Switzerland's Lindt, French chocolate is the best kept secret in the world. What makes it so special is that it is not targeted to the taste of children but to the tastes of true aficionados. French chocolate does not use any preservatives and only cocoa butter and the purest ingredients are used.

In New York City we experienced largely the worst of French chocolate, but these companies have understood the less than savvy North American and Asian customer and that's why they do so well in places like New York City and in the tourist hot spots of Paris. In New York we visited Fauchon, La Maison du Chocolat, Debauve & Gallais, and a couple of local places. Aside from Debauve & Gallais which is simply much too expensive, we can safely say that these vendors are as much chocolatiers as Trump is a real estate mogul. Both have simply figured out how to execute good marketing. This could all be summed up at La Madeleine in Paris where a massive Fauchon store stretches across two store fronts in the corner of the Place while right next door is la Marquise de Sevigne. La Marquise has a tremendous tradition of chocolate, much greater than Fauchon which is traditionally more of an epicerie fine. Yet Fauchon was jam-packed with Japanese, Americans, and other foreigners stumbling over each other to get their hands on the famous black and white striped bag with hot pink paper of Fauchon while la Marquise was largely empty. Enough on that, trust me when I say that the following list of recommendations is guaranteed to delight you if you truly like chocolate. If you dream of going to Hershey, Pennsylvania, don't waste your time.

A Day of Chocolate

First, a quick and dirty list of what we visited and a grade, then the detail will follow. Also consult the map so you can see how you can execute the same scenario yourself. What's great about it is that instead of checking off a list of boring tourist attractions where you go there and just sit around snapping pictures, this itinerary is interactive, sensual, and still allows you to experience the sites of the city and get a good feeling for what Paris is like. On this chocolate tour you will see at least the following on a 3 mile trek by foot that takes you from Solferino Metro station to Victor Hugo Metro station:

• Place Vendome
  
• La Madeleine
  
• Place de la Concorde
  
• Jardins des Tuileries
  
• Le Grand and Petit Palais
  
• Les Champs Elysees
  
• l'Arc de Triomphe
  
  

Now, la piece de resistance - the relative grading scale (for reference a Godiva is a "C" and a Hershey's Pot of Gold is an "F"):

• Richart Chocolatier: B+
  
• Jean-Paul Hevin Chocolatier: A
  
• Laduree: A
  
• Marquise de Sevigne: B
  
• Dalloyau: A-
  
• Patrick Roger: A+
  

At each of the chocolate stores you can count that a small chocolate the size of a typical Godiva chocolate will cost you approximately $1 to $1.50 a piece. YES, the Euro does not help but these are a luxury item anyway and are very perishable unlike ANY of the chocolates you may previously have experienced. Typically, the better tasting the chocolate, the more expensive it is.

Richart Chocolatier - a quaint little store with a modern all-white look on the Rive Gauche, boulevard St. Germain, a stone's throw from the Solferino Metro station. They do not sell "au détail," instead their miniature chocolates (about half the size of a normal piece, so truly "bite-size") are sold in white boxes according to their flavor profile - floral, balsamic, spiced, etc. This is the most epicurean of all the chocolatiers which is a bit frustrating to select from if you just want chocolate. You can find it here, but it is hard and the chef clearly dictates to you how he views the world of chocolate, which is good for him and those like him, but not necessarily so much for us.

Chez Angelina - located on rue de Rivoli this place is sustained mainly by well-to do tourists and a few high-society French that have decided this is where they should spend their time. While the tourists are usually the amusement in these places, the French here are fantastically unusal caricatures, including the servers. The hot chocolate was quite good, it tasted like it was made wih heavy whipping cream. The service and atmosphere on the other hand were quite bad as the place was worn, tight, and was not kept as clean as it should, despite the fact that it is a beautiful Victorian-era dining room. The server was passable with us but he had misunderstood (purposefully most likely) a table of two Americans and had brought out two pastries instead of one and despite their protestations kept telling them "it's good" and then began stomping away as if to say he was not going to waste his time arguing with them, leaving the pastry. The American did not let go and he came back and finally took it. I don't think we would come back here despite how good the chocolate was. Try Laduree that I describe later on for hot chocolate.

Jean-Paul Hevin - this is most likely the most celebrated and recognized of the group and is a close second in quality to Patrick Roger - in our humble opinion. Our greediness to get to the next place without carefully consulting the map made us have to retrace steps to try the store on rue St. Honore. An intimate, modernistic affair, the staff here was busy preparing elaborate special order gift boxes so we happily obliged to interrupt their endeavors and hand-select a few pieces. The chocolate was consistently good, clearly Hevin produces a lot of chocolate to meet the demand for its reputation but it has not lost touch with what has made it great.

Laduree - known for its flavored macarons, which are delicious (though pricey), this was the most beautiful store we visited and had a cafe section. It is located at the mouth of the Place de la Madeleine on Rue Royale. We were one of the few of a horde of French and foreigners who did not purchase any macarons but loaded up on chocolates. Laduree has the BEST packaging of any of the chocolate houses and the chocolate is delicious to boot. Highly recommend giving from Laduree as a gift. Their Palets Or are onctuously amazing and had the most significant "can't stop eating" effect on us.

Marquise de Sevigne - as our grade indicates, and despite my lauding it favorably against Fauchon, the Marquise was the chocolate we preferred the least. La Marquise is the least artisinal of the producers here and does so in large volume and does substantial pre-packaging. When in a bind, I would pick this over any other brand not listed here. The chocolate is smooth and aromatic but lacks the butteriness of the others. The store we visited is located on Place de la Madeleine on the northeast corner. A great place to visit because of the number of other boutiques there.

Dalloyau - a bit off the beaten path (but not as bad as Richart) when compared to its competitors, we visited the beautiful store as dusk was settling in on the corner of rue du Colisee and rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore. The store was the best decorated for Christmas on the exterior with rich looking white lights and lit red silken treatments around the windows - sadly we did not take a picture as we were too shy to do so with the impressive looking doorman/goon posted out front handling the fancy cars that approached to make their last minute Christmas pick ups. Perhaps due to the time of day this was the liveliest of all stores, though not as crowded as the perfunctory Laduree. Dalloyau does much more than chocolate including macarons and fruits confits but we stuck to our guns and ordered chocolate. This house has a wide assortment of presentation options and types and we gifted one of their boxes so we cannot tell you how good that was, but the ones we tasted were quite good although frankly the detraction of everything else they were selling conciously impacted our appreciation. It's like this - a magnificent bottle of wine just doesn't taste all that great if you know the winery is owned by Coca Cola . . . maybe that is a bad analogy. Their other items, especially pate de fruits and fruits confits, looked amazing!

Patrick Roger - our last store, we visited this as darkness had settled in quite well on Paris. Roger has recently won a sought-after award for being the best chocolatier in Paris and we could not deny it to him. The presentation is very unusual as is the design of the store with full picture murals and an imbuement of this signature turquoise colors and dark chocolate brown all over the place. In a center display were tall (4 feet) christmas trees made entirely out of chocolate which had been dripped to create cascading branches. With the picture murals on the walls you really felt as though you were in a chocolate forest. The order desk is also very different so that there is not so much of a division between the chocolate and the prospective consumer. It is questionable whether a sneeze guard should exist but in any event it is great that one can hover over the chocolate selection equally as well as the salesperson to make selections. Ouch, ouch, ouch was this place expensive, each piece definitely breaking the $1.50 per piece rule of thumb. It is hard to describe how good these chocolates were but Patrick knows how to pick his fillings and craft his chocolates so they taste just so perfectly.

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Photos

One Down, Five to Go
On the Passerelle de Senghor over the Seine with Orsay Museum to the right and the Louvre to the left. We had just visited Richart.

Us Together
That's a grimace from wallet pain. What nice person must have taken this photo of us so early in the morning!

A Cat in the Jardin des Tuileries
The first one we saw on the trip, we are about to cross rue de Rivoli and go to Chez Angelina for the best hot chocolate in Paris.

Allegedly the Best
The hot chocolate is lauded as the best in Paris though Axel says Laduree's is qite good. Located right next to Hotel Meurice on rue de Rivoli, this is a posh address but the servers were jerks to foreigners and the place was not well kept up. There was still old French money lingering about though.

Place Vendome
On our way back to Jean-Paul Hevin since I was unable to follow my own turn-by-turn directions.

Conspiracy Theorists Unite!
That's a backdrop of the Champs Elysees foshizzle, we weren't there, just creating an alibi!

l'Etoile
On our last and final trek to the well worthwhile Patrick Roger in the 16th arrondissement on Avenue Victor Hugo. Roger has been recognized as the best chocolatier in Paris and we confirmed this on our blind tasting.

Victor Hugo Metro Station
On our first trip out to Paris several years ago we had a picture of Jennifer in front of Hugo's house in Le Marais, the on the second his tomb at the Panteon, now the metro station name after the street that bears his name.