Travelsmartplanet

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Behind Sacre Coeur Cathedral there is a touristy restaurant zone where you can enjoy a typical French meal before getting your spot in front of Sacre Coeur for the sunset. 3-course prix fixe meals are well priced at 16 – 23 euros (around $22-$28US) and are actually pretty tasty. Expect to find classic onion soup, beef Bourguignon, coq au vin, salmon, and apple tart for dessert. Don’t order any soda – that’s where they get you.

In the eighteenth century at Fortress Louisbourg, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the lower class diet included locally prepared bread, spruce beer, meat or fish. Staples like butter, cheese, and rum were imported. Here I dined on pea soup and an apple tart for dessert. They ate with spoons. Gathering for a meal was not only for sustenance but also for news, companionship and games of chance.

Laurent Gerbaud, Belgian chocolatier, was so good that he was sent to Shanghai for the World Expo to show off the sweet talents of his country. However, when he got there he soured on chocolates. Gerbaud discovered that the Chinese were not  used to so much sugar so making use of his creative skills he revised his recipes and started to work on tart and bitter tastes.

He searches purveyors for ingredients such as South African Barrrydale apricots, Persian cranberries, Turkish figs, pepper, spicy ginger  and orange peel, and mixes them with his dark dark 70 % chocolate recipe using  chocolate from Madagascar and Ecuador. The Turkish figs are crunchy, chewy and just slightly sweet. One with Greek pistachios blends salt, sweet (milk chocolate) and nut crunch. There’s a salute to Belgians love for specoloos (gingerbread) by rolling a truffle in the crumbs.

Gerbaud is really a chocolate pusher because once you get addicted to his intense flavor combos, it is very hard to go back to sweetened chocolate.

www.chocolatsgerbaud.be