Sweet & Bittersweet

England has scones, France has cheese and Belgium has chocolate. Beyond eating chocolates, I didn’t have much of a clue as to what to do with our time in Belgium. I googled to see what else Belgians ate, but there wasn’t anything culturally distinct except perhaps for Belgian fries (they are wider than regular fries and is delicious with the local Andalouse sauce), so chocolates it was.

On our first day in Brussels, we went to the Grote Markt, and the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries, the Markt’s rather grand shopping arcade, became our regular haunt. 

There are chocolate shops all over the Markt, but the best are concentrated in the Galleries. We wasted no time and started sampling chocolates immediately. We were lucky to acquaint ourselves with one called Manon Sucré on that very first evening. It is more candy than chocolate, with a soft sugar shell and a small piece of roasted pecan tucked into a generous dollop of buttercream on the inside. It was incredibly rich, and it won our hearts. Almost every night thereafter, we would go to the shop, Corné Port-Royal, and buy one each and only one each. Even though it was tempting to buy more, I felt it was meant to be appreciated in small doses. And one does have to leave room for others.

As I fell in love with Manon Sucré, Mike discovered Galler’s Blanc Pistaches (pistachio praline covered in white chocolate) in the local Carrefour. He was addicted to the point where his purchase over next few days probably, single-handedly, emptied out the box of Galler pistachio bars in the shop. I turned my nose up at supermarket Belgian chocolate initially, but one night after eating too many chips (Max hot chicken wings flavor, my current favorite potato chips), I found that I couldn’t stop myself from consuming an entire bar and had to admit that it was indeed a great bar of chocolate. The other Galler flavors don’t rise to the same level even though they taste great too.

We made a few trips out of Brussels to other cities. Belgium is a small country and has good public transportation, so these were easy 40-minute train rides (except Bruges which was an hour, but still very comfortable). These trips out were also the only way we could have filled up our eight days in Belgium. Gent was probably the most underwhelming of the lot (I would say whelming, if it was a word), but I did enjoy the one chocolate experience we had there. While we were walking about, I was drawn to the sight of a young woman in her chef’s attire, behind the window of a shop, studiously crafting chocolates. We walked around the store and took a gander at the window display of fish shaped chocolates—it amused me. Inside, the shop felt very professional. I could hear the woman at the counter (also in chef’s attire) talking to a customer, an inquisitive Asian woman (whom we oddly enough came across in another city), about the different confections, but she explained things in such precise, almost technical terms that you knew she was taking time away from her real role of creator to deal with the customer. We got our bag of samples and while the flavors themselves were a little out there for me, I appreciated the experience. There was one called cardamom coffee, and though I am not one for coffee in my candy (unless it’s Coffy Bite), it was wonderfully reminiscent of South India. I also found that these chocolates melted more delightfully in my mouth, without being too buttery or grainy or sugary.

We did not hit up any chocolate shops in Bruges, but we enjoyed the place. Because it has preserved its medieval architecture, it has a distinct feel. I also got a rather funky shirt from one of the many clothing stores there (I went to one called Juttu) and it was nice to get something that I could take home with a Belgian mark on it. I still cherish the shirt I got from Bordeaux from our first trip to France five years ago, and I am beginning to enjoy the international twist in my wardrobe.

Our final trip was to Antwerp, which on paper seemed like the most happening city of the three. It turned out to be a more expansive version of Brussels and would have passed off unremarkably in our memories had it not been for our visit to Chocolate Nation. The exterior of the museum may not inspire much confidence. It is meekly attached to a Radisson Blu four times its size and located by a rather spiritless Chinatown. But once inside, the museum delivers. 

The tour itself was a self-guided multimedia tour which took us through various rooms that immersed us in the history and production of chocolate. By room #3 we could smell the cocoa. In room #4, they displayed a Willy Wonka like chocolate factory production and told us how in Belgium many chocolatiers take their sweet time in one of the last steps of chocolate production—they knead the already meshed chocolate+milk+fat slab for as many additional hours as they pleased, giving Belgian chocolates that extra smooth consistency.

By this point, I was more than ready to get at the chocolate samples, but I obligingly went through the other rooms providing historical facts about the chocolate industry and Belgian chocolate makers. I learned that eight chocolatiers have the royal warrant whereby they have the official seal of the Belgian Royal family …for the quality of a service rendered to the King and Queen pertaining to regular supplies... (states monarchie.be). I wonder if other royal families do the same thing for their regular suppliers, and if they don’t, they should! Much better way to harness soft power than selling out to tabloids. These royal eight, by the way, are Galler (Mike’s favorite), Neuhaus, Wittamer, Van Dender, Mary, Leonaidas (our least favorite), Godiva and Pierre Marcolini (who are locally more known for their macarons, though ultimately the French are easily better at it).

I made a note of these because I wanted to make sure I tried them all. In the end we tried seven (someday, somewhere, Wittamer), but I will take it as a win. The final room had ten box-shaped machines churning liquid chocolate. We were each given a spoon. We approached each box and pulled down a lever and from a tiny pipe at the bottom right of the machine we received a squirt of chocolate onto our spoons. A part of me wants to have a liquid chocolate dispensing machine at home, or just find some way to easily consume liquid chocolate instead of chocolate bars. I made a note of all my favorite flavors, which was basically everything except the dark chocolates, because chocolate is really about pleasure for me, and not feeling like, ah, my healthy indulgence (though I didn’t mind Bournville dark chocolates back in India).

Then finally, it was shop-time! To my great satisfaction and relief, they had straight up bar versions of the chocolates that we had just sampled. I bought five bars. They were melting within a few minutes of my holding them, so obviously Mike and I had to polish them off the very night.

I also bought a box with all ten bars for my friend in Beverly who had been looking after our plants while we were away. On our first night after getting back from Brussels, I woke up in the middle of the night from a rather conflicting inner debate that I had had all through my flight—should I really give my friend that box or do I give her one of the other innumerable chocolates I bought in a last gasp from the duty-free shop at the airport? Mike was willing to be an ally to my greed (bless him), though Amma was like, ayyo, don’t do that. In the end I texted my friend— “do you like chocolate?”—just to be sure, after all she is rather skinny and does not seem to have much of an appreciation for food. “Yes of course!” came the reply. I pat myself on the back for the sacrifice, and besides, her husband likes dark chocolate, so at least all the bars will receive their due appreciation.