Le Grand Sablon

There is something to all the talk about Brussels being a gastronomical mecca out of proportion with the other points of interest of the city. Sure it’s the capital of the EU, sure it has some palaces and royal parks and royal art museums and stuff, but there’s a distinctive blandness to Brussels. It’s all very pleasant, but lacks the arrogance and style that define Paris, the formerly-colonized-of-the-world-unite! vibe of London, and the quirky preciousness of Amsterdam (full disclosure: I’ve never been to Amsterdam, but I imagine it’s quirkily precious). So Brussels is a reasonably charming city with lots of excellent yet reasonably priced restaurants. My second sister, Sharon Light, whom I visited along with her fiancé Gidon Van Emden, took me on my first day to le Grand Sablon, a picturesque square lined with the country’s finest chocolate stores. We went first to Wittamer because according to Shar, they sell standard chocolates of excellent quality. We got a few to try – some truffles, some earl grey flavored pralines, and a couple others, and then went outside to the square to sample. They were exquisite. I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe them, but they were super flavorful, smooth, and fresh tasting if you can imagine chocolate as such. Next we went in to Pierre Marcolini, which Sharon calls the Prada of chocolates. It made sense to go there next because evidently Wittamer taught Marcolini everything he knews; Marcolini decided to style it up and come out with some new stuff. The store is all shiny glass cases, white walls, and dark dark chocolates. The staff was impeccably dressed and incredibly polite. Though the first words out of our mouths were “nous sommes des touristes, nous seulement regardons les chocolates,” they offered us samples from the summer collection of fruit flavored pralines: raspberry ones, melon ones, passion fruit ones, some kind with balsamic vinegar, and maybe another one or two. Again, exquisite intense flavor in a minimalist yet very appealing package. By the time we made it upstairs to see the rest of the stock, Sharon had already decided to buy a box.