One of the highlights of going to the Chocolate Show today was a panel called "Judging the Judges ( Read more... )

We celebrated Chocolate Week with taldragon and lazyknight by having dinner at one of the only restaurants in London doing anything other than afternoon tea in its honor. I had fairly high expectations of it thanks to having had a wonderfully sumptuous meal earlier in the year at its upscale sibling, Galvin La Chapelle.

( Chocolate and toddlers... )

Location: 18 Almeida Street in Islington, about a 10 minute's walk north of Angel. London.

For Chocolate Week, Almeida, a restaurant, coordinated with Paul A. Young, chocolatier, to create a three course menu for the second year running. We went with cwjat who, as it happens, is allergic to chocolate and so ordered off of the regular menu.

( Richly chocolatey, with a really nice bit of pork belly.... )

This was a one-off dinner, each course orchestrated by a different chef or chocolatier, in honor of the overlap of Chocolate Week in the UK and London's inaugural Restaurant Week. As a result of all the different agendas and personalities involved, it was only a coherent meal to the degree that each dish involved chocolate. To a degree, they were ( Read more... )

Back when it was Chocolate Week, C. and I went to a chocolate and cheese pairing workstop at with Paul A. Young and his eponymous chocolate shop. I've eyed this even a time or two in the past when it's been offered, but it was always booked up before I stood a chance at it ( Read more... )

Location: 8-14 Mandeville Place, London, near Bond Street Station ( Read more... )

Dear People in the UK,

Happy Chocolate Week! It starts today and lasts through Sunday.

Even if you can't attend any of the events, you maybe interested in some of the offers available with print-outable coupons. London is disproportionately represented, but there are chocolate shops in many other parts of the country offering events and coupons

Tuesday - Rococo organized an hour's talk at the Natural History Museum, a visit to Britain's oldest cocoa pod. It was brought back as part of a collection of Jamaican plants, part of Sir Hans Sloane's systematics collection. Linnaeus, when Sloane was old, worked through Sloane's collection as part of his systematization work. The curators were ( Read more... )

In southern England? Like chocolate? Next week is Chocolate Week, an annual event featuring loads of chocolate-themed events, free samples, demos, and tours. Most of them are free. Some involve signing up. If you're interested in signing up, do so as soon as possible, as some of the more unusual events are already full. There's all sorts of things ( Read more... )

What better way to celebrate Chocolate Week than to go on a tour of most of the top chocolateries the city has to offer? After self-organizing a Toronto chocolate tour, I'd long been meaning to do the same for London. And then I saw the Chocolate Week program offerings - and it included an all-day chocolate tour organized by Chocolate Ecstasy Tours ( Read more... )