Jacques Genin Chocolate Tasting – Part 1

Just who is Jacques Genin?  For many many years, he had a small little studio of a production space which, when I visited him, had 2 enrobing machines and barely enough space for two people to pass each other sideways.  Today, he finally has his own shop on Rue de Turenne near the metro station Filles du Calvaire.

Having originally been a chef and owning his own restaurant, he fell in love with chocolates and switched to the dark side.  Prior to having his shop, he made chocolates for the best restaurants in Paris and the occasional foodie who knocked on his window.  Finally, after so many years of hearing about him, I finally got to taste his chocolates.  Even though we had spoken a year before at his old production studio, he declined my offer to buy a kilo of caramels and a kilo of chocolates.  This is not a problem now!

10 Euros for a box of 9 chocolates from Jacques Genin seems a little cheap, compared to the prices charged by other ‘big names’.  Packaged in a slick, modern-looking aluminum box with a minimalist design, you wonder if he makes any money at all.  I would have gladly paid 15 Euros for this, considering it is Jacques Genin.

 

Bernachon Chocolates, Lyon

My first brush with Bernachon chocolates came several years ago in Melbourne, when the chocolate bug bit, and a copy of Bernachon’s ‘Passion for Chocolate’ arrived at the apartment.  Names like Amandine Princess, L’Aveline and Le President stoked the fantasies of a nascent passion for chocolates.

It was only this year, when I got to taste Bernachon chocolates for the first time at the Salon du Chocolat in Tokyo, where their seemingly ‘plain Jane’ Palet d’Or was the most mind blowing chocolate I ate.

Fast forward a few months and I found myself in Paris, with L’Etoile d’Or being the only shop in the world that can retail Bernachon chocolates, I made it the first destination to explore what Denise Acabo’s chocolate world was like.  Let the Maison Bernachon taste experience begin!