Patrick Roger

   The first thing that you notice about this sleek chocolate shop on Boulevard Saint-Germain is the sculpture in the window. Currently a jaguar gnawing on a bone, it is huge. Inside is dim lighted, and the signature color aqua is all over. There is a smell of dark chocolate when you walk in the door, a mark of the trade.


   This chocolate shop was started thirty years ago in south-western Paris. Patrick Roger started his business in his own house, and then opened a small boutique in his home town. He started out as a baker, and then switched to chocolate. He makes his famous sculptures himself. Green is the trademark color of his store, not only because it's his favorite color, but because he loves nature. That is why, in some of his stores, there is a setting of a forest, and on some of the chocolate-bar boxes are branches.

   The jaguar is naturally the main attraction. Every summer since the summer we found this store, which was a couple of years ago, we have posed with the former hippopotamuses, ape, monkey, and other animals. After the time of the old sculpture is done, they cast it in bronze or some other kind of metal. This big figure is what gives off most of the dark chocolate smell that is in the store.

  There are quite a few of these stores around, but they all have the same modern, aqua colored setting. The store that we always go to is on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Inside, the counters are polished wood, the railings gleaming metal. The floor, made of black tiles, is spotless, as is everything else in the shop. Air-conditioning is on full blast, and your body has a hard time maintaining homeostasis. (Tip: Bring a sweater.) Not all Patrick Roger (pronounced Paatrik Roegae) have chocolate sculptures, but one of them has a beautiful glass window in the front framed by green glass meant to look like a forest.

   The chocolate itself is amazing. There are pralines, which are chocolates with chocolate-hazelnut spread inside and hazelnuts on top, chocolate bars ranging from 100% to milk chocolate, and the smaller chocolates of every shape, size, and flavor. Aqua bags of chocolate line the trade-mark shiny shelves, and marzipan frogs, elephants, ducks and ladybugs sit on the counter opposite the jaguar. On the shelves in the back of the semi-circle of products lie the chocolate bars, and in the middle is a round counter. On the part of the counter facing the front doors are the greenish-blue boxes of assorted chocolates. Behind, as well as on the other side of the counter, (the counter is divided in half by a walkway), protected by glass, are the smaller, one piece chocolates.

   Out of all the delicious chocolates, I chose an orangette. Shaped like a lumpy, oversized stick, it is orange gelatin covered in chocolate. The orange gelatin made a squelchy noise when bitten into, and was hard but soft makes squelchy noise when bitten into firm tangy citrony sweet dark yummy soft easy to bite things like that really good shaped like oversized stick MMMMMMMM! Soo good!! flaky breaks apart when bitten into chwy hard to chew grainy

Jean-Paul Hevin

This relatively large store is up the street from Luxembourg Gardens. The first thing you see is the window display, which immediately gives away what the trade of this store is, aside from making pastries.
Inside is sleek and modern; shiny surfaces made of metal and glass. On the shelves around the store are chocolate sculptures including a white chocolate shoe and a milk chocolate Eiffel Tower. These shoes were in other colors such as red and green when we had just got here in early June, but soon disappeared. When I asked the lady who worked at the store what happened, she replied that the shoes were just in the window for Mother's day, but she was able to show us the left over white one. The smaller chocolates lie protected in a glass case on the counter. Milk chocolates, dark chocolate, and every shape and size of chocolate sit in neat little black boxes. Just looking at them takes your taste buds on a journey.

I chose a medium-sized chocolate called a Bouchee Caramel Croustillante. In the shape of a square, it is milk chocolate with caramel in the middle and crumbled wafer on top, covered in more milk chocolate. It's shell was soft and hard at the same time, and the caramel was nice and gooey, while retaining a slight taste of coffee and fruit. The wafer was crunchy with the kind of texture of chopped up nuts, and it was layered nicely. It was a sublime chocolate.

The chocolate itself is made right outside of Paris in Colombe. Jean-Paul Hevin has been making chocolate for 24 years, getting the cao-cao beans from exotic places such as Haiti and Java. A small, dark chocolate rectangle, the Caraibe, which is a ganache nature, is, according to the vendeuse, the chocolate of choice for most people. It looked good, with it's little ripples on top and dark chocolate coating. So if you find yourself around Luxembourg Gardens...Bon appetit!