While we were in Chicago this past weekend we visited a new chocolate shop called “Ethel’s Chocolate Lounge”. We went there with friends to pick up some dessert to bring back to their apartment. The shop is Starbucks combined with a candy store, except more expensive – 12 chocolates cost us $14. They have bon-bons that have little air-brushed martini glasses on them to indicate urban-styled-liquor chocolates. The 4 of us ate all 12 of the chocolates and concluded they all sucked. My wife said the chocolate truffle tasted like it was filled with Hershey’s syrup.
Then today, I read this article from the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
More precisely, Mars Inc., the closely held candy giant behind Ethel’s, is betting that chocolate is the new coffee. Decorated with pink-and-brown striped wallpaper and whimsical lighting, the new chain is Mars’s attempt to make lingering over a plate of premium chocolates in a cafe space as mainstream as drinking a morning latte at Starbucks. For a company best known for making mass-market products like Twix and Snickers bars, this means transforming a lowly commodity into a high-price luxury.
That explains it. The shop is owned by a candy bar company – they’ll never make really good chocolate.
In the meantime, when in Des Moines (or Amsterdam) make sure to visit Chocolaterie Stam to get some real chocolates. We take our kids there about once a week. I’m not sure our kids will ever be able to enjoy a plain old Snickers bar after all the Stam chocolates they’ve had.
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