Perhaps you’ll be shocked to learn that I’m not a chocoholic. I’ve always been more for savory food than sweets, but every now and then (and lately more often than not) do I get a strange and sudden yearning for some chocolate. My favorite chocolate right now is the Marabou chocolate and I always grab at least two of those long sticks when we’re at IKEA. They’re sold in regular supermarkets as well, but somehow we got this IKEA routine down and it involves stuffing ourselves with Köttbullar and buying Marabou chocolate.
You also might be aware that I’m not a big fan of all things bitter. I don’t drink regular coffee or eat brussels sprouts and you might catch me eating the endive leaves in a salad first thing, just to get rid of them. So chocolate for me usually means really sweet milk chocolate. I love nougat, and not the white chewy kind (known here as „Turkish honey“), but the sweet chocolatey kind.
But lately my husband and I have gotten a bit adventurous when it comes to the chocolate department. We chased for quite some time after the Lindt 99% chocolate, a very dark chocolate that contains 99% cocoa and is a bit like eating chocolate dust really and only to be enjoyed in really tiny bits. Only a few weeks ago we stumbled upon a special chocolate sale thing at a local department store and each chose a chocolate bar we’d like to try out.
So, naturally when I heard that there was an all chocolate shop in Cologne I went to check it out last week. It’s called „chocolat“ and apparently it’s a small chain with six shops in Germany at the moment. Two of them are in Cologne and one is in Düsseldorf, so we’re covered. I went to the one situated in the DuMont Carré, which is a small shopping mall on Breite Strasse.
At first I was overwhelmed. So much chocolate, so many different brands and flavors, one stranger than the other, although of course you can always get your basic dark or milk chocolate here. They even had traditional Cologne beer bottles made of chocolate, which I believe would be a perfect gift for someone who adores Cologne and chocolate. I wandered around aimlessly, considering all my choices and then went for the Dolfin Carré 24 Épices, which appealed to me because of the somewhat strange use of spices and chocolate (Earl Grey flavored chocolate, anyone?).
I also chose little chocolatey balls intended for making hot chocolate, picking the bourbon vanilla flavor, which turned out to be white chocolate balls. You just drop three to six in a glass or cup and then fill it with hot milk and stir. If you are my husband you might ask your wife (aka me) to add a bit of rum. Both my non-alcoholic and his were really tasty and exactly what you might need on a dark cold winter night.
There were so many other flavors and brands that appealed to me, so I’ll definitely be back. This also reminds me that I have never been to the chocolate museum here in Cologne, which – especially considering my food obsession – seems pretty inexcusable. I know.
chocolat
DuMont-Carré, Shop 14
Breite Straße 80-90
50667 Köln
Phone / Fax: 0221 / 250 88 15
mail@chocolatshop.de
For the addresses of the other shops, please check out their website.