Chocolate is no small thing to me. In our family, there’s no such thing as too much chocolate. Chocolate runs through our veins so voraciously that my aunt and cousin travelled to Belgium to learn how to make proper Belgian chocolates. The result? A successful lakeside chocolate shop in a sleepy town that people drove for hours to get to.
As a teenager, I used to work in said shop in the summer – my aunt insisted on paying me in cash, but I knew that if I didn’t bring home some chocolate to her Dutch-born brother, my dad, I may come home to changed locks. So I took a “pay cut” and got a little bit of both.
What I never understood was how my aunt and cousin stayed so trim – the moment you walked into their shop that once housed a bowling alley in the ‘50s (it came complete with wooden plank alleys, old malt taps and red soda fountain spinning stools), you were enveloped in wafts of cocoa and what I can only describe as heaven on earth.
But beyond the western swing doors was where the magic happened. I never paid close enough attention to my aunt’s movements to actually learn how to make proper Belgian chocolate, as I was often too busy being a taste-tester, but I can tell you with authority that there is nothing like freshly made chocolate, even before it’s had time to temper.
Treat yourself and your favourite household member to the Westin’s Chocolate Tasting & Dinner Experiential Night for your own heavenly chocolate experience – a three-course plated dinner coupled with a 45-minute live chocolate tasting presentation (plus a one-night accommodation with in-room bottle of wine) on April 10 or 24.
