Chocolate Tasting 101 Class and 16-Piece Box of Chocolate at Xoxolat~
The store formerly known as Monde Chocolat (Costco copyrighted their name)
still carries a great selection of specialty sweets. Amedei chocolate from Tuscany?
Sure. Zotter treats from Austria?
Got ’em. Owner Hodie Rondeau’s truffle case includes international flavours—Azteca chipotle, Madagascar vanilla—based on recipes that go back five generations.
You’ll meet all your baking needs with their single-origin bars from around the globe;
they have one of the West Coast’s largest selections.
Xoxolat (pronounced “sho-sho-lat”) also rents out fountains to feed up to 300 guests.
I've been to Xoxolat for both walk by shopping and a basic chocolate 101 crash course
and would highly recommend both, or more if you can get it!
If you're not sure about the origins, health benefits, flavours, regions,
percentages, etc. of chocolate, and you really want to know,
then you should really head here and ask.
Best chocolate shop in the city!
Home to one of the largest selections of single origin chocolate bars from around the world.
More than 30 flavors of truffles with seasonal features.
Extensive line of organic, fair trade and equitable trade chocolates.
Barks, truffles, pralines and caramels all made fresh, in-house.
Perfect gift for family foodies.
Take inspiration from classic European chocolatiers.
I was so enjoy the "basic chocolate 101 crash course" through Social Bites and always
had a good experience.
It's good to really taste the subtle differences between these chocolates and
gives a better appreciation for them, like with wine. "
The chocolate tasting intro that we did was pretty awesome.
I didn't know chocolate had ""notes"".
Or that your typical run of the mill chocolate bar has lots of wax in it....
like wax your snowboard wax. Gross.
The chocolate I tried was fantastic!
I highly recommend the Zotter line.
YUM!
The shop has lots of chocolate for the novice or fancy refined palate.
Opt for a tasty and healthy bar that costs a little more, and leave the wax to your snowboard :) .
I'm not a huge chocolate eater but I quite enjoy all of my visits to Xoxolat.
The staff are very knowledgeable and love their products and it really shows in the selection,
the atmosphere, and the amount of information you can learn by just asking someone 'what's good?'.
This is a nice little shop that has some of its own chocolates (barks, dipped fruits, boxed items that you can fill with chocolate items from the display.
Great selection of fair trade brands like Theo from Seattle and imported brands like Valrhona from France and some harder to find brands like Amadei and Amano.
Prices are a touch steep but the chocolate we bought was great quality. We had a milk chocolate bark with nuts to share - I like that their milk chocolate is actually a bit dark... was about $8.50 a piece. Would come back again!
This place has amazing chocolates - a wide variety of flavors and textures from many countries and chocolatiers. They have their own truffles as well, with truly wonderful flavors like Strawberry Black Pepper and French Lavender.
Their biggest philosophy is how chocolate can be broken down into our senses,
smell, touch, feel, and most importantly taste.
Xoxolat
Music historian Robert Fauxnom has recently concluded that 98% of all love songs were secretly written about chocolate.
You can learn a lot about chocolate, and therefore about lover. a “Chocolate 101” tasting class, plus a 16-piece box of organic, connoisseur chocolates from Xoxolat.
Their name is pronounced sho-sho-la, but it’s hardly ever spoken,
as the mouth is usually full of xoxolat.
What is this mystical bean called cacao sent down to us by Aztec Shamans?
What makes it so unique, so stimulating, and, dare we say, so sensual?
Where on Earth is it grown, how do they do it, and why are we jonesing for it right now?
Why does the same bean, grown on two different plantations,
produce noticeably different flavor compositions to the educated palate?
You shall become such a palate, under the tutelage of a Xoxolat master in their Vancouver chocolate gallery.
Suffice it to say this class will be better than any you’ve ever taken,
with rare exceptions for those who attended some sort of sex college.
And even then…
The woman running the tasting was the owner, and she explained to us numerous times that she doesn't have a super refined pallet for chocolate, and only bought the store because it seemed fun.
We finally got to try some chocolate, and that was fun, and tasty. And she had lots of samples for us, so no complaints there. I just had a hard time following along with the presentation because a lot of her "facts" were made up numbers. Which she admitted to. It just seemed like she wasn't really prepared to give us the info because she didn't really know it herself.
There were some good bits, and I have a higher appreciation for chocolate, I suppose, but I don't think I would have felt satisfied had I paid full price for the class.
Also, it's a tiny shop, and we were packed in there, with no seats. So we stood for an hour and a half trying to taste chocolate while balancing our belongings in the other hand.
I wouldn't recommend the class to someone who is quite pregnant, or can't do long periods of standing.
Overall, it's a nice shop, with a very good range of chocolates, and the class was interesting, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone wanting a serious understanding of chocolate. There are other classes for the non-beginner, and they are taught by someone else who has a lot of knowledge, so perhaps those classes are better.
For stars, I would say a 2 and a half for the class, and a 4 for the shop.
Anyhow, other than the class, the chocolates were very nice, and I enjoyed trying a range of different varieties, flavour combos, and percentages, and I especially enjoyed the drinking chocolate.
We got a lovely gift box of the shop's own confectionery chocolates, and I bought a couple bars, too. The chocolate shoes are really cute, too. Two of my favourite things!
10 Reasons to Improve Your Good Taste at Xoxolat
1. You’ve never seen a bigger selection of single-origin chocolate bars from around the world. Unless you’ve quietly been building your own personal collection, in which case we bow to you, oh wise one.
2. Your wine-snob friends think they have the market cornered on knowing stuff. You’ll show them the next time they try to offer you a common drug-store candy bar!
3. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sure could have used Chocolate 101. When Christopher Columbus brought them tons of strange souvenirs from his newly discovered New World, they barely paid attention to the few brown beans.
4. Xoxolat’s gallery (not merely a shop) features an extensive line of Fair Trade and Equitable Trade chocolates. Because part of having good taste is doing good business.
5. Finally, an academic subject you can really sink your teeth into.
6. You can buy up to 4 vouchers for yourself, and an unlimited amount as gifts, which is appropriate, as chocolate clearly is heaven’s gift to humankind.
7. You’ll learn about the many facets of chocolate, including how it can be paired with unusual flavors such as bacon, peppercorns, and chilis. That’s what we all were trying to demonstrate as children, but our parents couldn’t see our genius.
8. If you tell them how much you want to pursue your education after Chocolate 101, maybe they’ll allow you to do your dessert-tation on it and get a P.h.Delicious.
9. Xoxolat’s homemade delicacies are made with superior quality organic chocolate, to ensure and maintain their global superiority.
10. If you think Xoxolat is hard to pronounce, be glad we’re not in the 6th century, when Mayans called the cocoa tree “cacahuaquchtl.”
I have given a couple gifts from this store, and also sampled a few things myself. Never been disappointed.
If you want to be impressed, get one of their sampler boxes. I was amazed at the variety of flavours and textures.
They also have these little foil-wrapped bug chocolates, and I bought maybe 8 of them and put them on my walls and fridge. I call them my "emergency chocolates".
I like them as decorations as well.
Since the lecture I haven't been able to go to regular 7-11 chocolate bars.
I found that a small piece of real chocolate satisfied my craving than
eating cheap drug store chocolate.
I came out there with a higher appreciation for good chocolate.
The lady who gave the lecture was pleasant and funny in her own way.
Xoxolat
2391 Burrard St
Vancouver, BC V6J 5L1
Neighbourhoods: Kitsilano, Fairview Slopes
(604) 733-2462
www.xoxolat.com/
Xoxolat, Vancouver, BC
100% Edible Chocolate Shoes!
XOXO Bamboo box with Truffles etc
Hours:
Tue-Sat 10:30 am - 6 pm
Sun 12 pm - 5 pm
info from ~SocialShopper
2011 10 30 Vancouver XOXOLAT Bar
