I stopped by La Maison du Chocolat yesterday to pick up a hatbox of goodies for some tour clients. While I’ve never found this particular boutique on the Rue du Sèvres to have particularly warm and cozy staff, they were kind enough to allow me to try one of their seasonal chocolates for summer 2010, called Garrigue.
Garrigue is a French word that evokes the low brush, or scrubland, of the Provençal hillsides. The boxes for this collection are bright canary yellow, quite a change from the normally quite sedate brown packages.
The flavors are:
- Strong dark chocolate
- Almond paste from Provençal almonds
- Dark chocolate with lemon zest
- Rhone Valley apricot confit in milk chocolate
- Almond and hazelnut praline with olive oil and black olive
;)
Can you guess which I tasted? Actually, I went with the plain dark chocolate, since I’m not a big fan of fruit, let alone olives, in my chocolate. I think they’d make a nice gift for any Maison du Chocolat fans looking for something different, but as my clients know, you can never go wrong with a hatbox full of tried and true classics.
I did try the olive one when I was in the shop last week and it was quite good; silky olive oil and little bits of salt and salty olives.
wow, that definitely is a surprising box from La Maison du Chocolat, love it. my choice would have been the apricot Olbia. i have had dark chocolate with olive oil before, and it makes for a nice texture without affecting the flavor too much. but actual olives, non merci. 😉