Chocolate Adventure at Borough Market

Last weekend, I visited one of the most famous food markets in the world ‘Borough Market’ in London. My quest was to search for market stalls selling high quality artesian handmade chocolates. Over the years, I have gained a huge interest in the chocolate making industry and my passion has grown bigger after visiting and working on the Kallari cocoa plantation, in Ecuador (August 2010). My aim one day is to sell and produce the highest quality and most delicious tasting chocolate in the world!!!

Currently, I am carrying out research on different chocolate companies and looking at their branding, packaging and taste, to find out more information about the chocolate market. My journey begins here at Borough Market, and as you can imagine anyone who is a real foodie and has a passion for food will be in their element!! At the market, there are various stalls selling the most exquisitely tasting foods such as French patisseries, cakes, curry’s, chutney, jam, cheese, meats exotic fruit and veg and many more food products.

I only managed to find two stalls which purely sold artesian chocolate and their names were Chocolicious and Artisan du Chocolat. Both stalls are based in the Green Market and Chocolicious specialises in selling hand-made chocolate truffles. Chocolicious had different flavours on offer which included elderflower, raspberry, cranberry with hazelnuts, and strawberry with balsamic vinegar. My favourite chocolates had to be the elderflower truffles as they tasted amazing and the texture was a perfect consistency. My least favourite were the strawberry and balsamic vinegar truffles, as the flavour was overpowered by the vinegar, and the chocolates literally disintegrated in your hands! Overall, I thought the chocolates were average tasting, but I like the down to earth approach and I like the fact the chocolates were individually hand made by the seller, which shows a personal touch.

The next stall I ventured to was Artisan du Chocolat. Initially, I was impressed with how the chocolates were presented in a colourful and artistic fashion on the stand. I was particularly impressed by the graphics on the chocolate bars, and on the individual chocolates as this demonstrated creativity and skilful crafting by the chocolatier.

Although the chocolates looked aesthetically pleasing to the eye ,they were bland, tasteless and mediocre. Personally, I feel they were too expensive, and I was disappointed as first impressions were good but this was soon dissipated by their taste. Overall, I had such a fun day and I would definitely recommend anyone to visit Borough market.The food is just amazing and you will want to try everything as the smells and freshly cooked foods will make you mouth salivate.