Saturday, February 23, 2013

Chocolate!

The kids in front of the chocolate bars' wall
Anyone who knows me, knows that I don't like chocolate. I just don't like the taste (unless it is in a Snickers bar or chocolate milk) and I do understand that this makes me weird! Today, my MOMS group was going to take a tour of a chocolate factory in LA.  I went because my boys seem to like any candy and I thought that it would be fun to see.  The chocolate store (I really don't think that it can be considered a factory since it was so small) was Compartes.  It is a small family run chocolate store that makes and sells very gourmet chocolate.  They are located in Los Angeles.  The store was out of a lot of chocolate because of the past Valentine's Day and they said that they were in the process of making a lot of chocolate orders for the Oscars.

Let's get the tour started.

Here is where the caps of the chocolates go to dry.  They make caps, which they paint the tops of (I can't remember with what).  Then after they are dry they fill them with something yummy and then put the chocolate on the bottom.  The caps looked like the caps from a keyboard.

Nathan did not want me to take his picture
The guy in the hat is the owner of the store!  He said that his parents bought this business when he was 12 and then when he was 25 he bought it from his parents.  He said that he is now 28 years old!  The guy seemed to really have his act together and he was very nice.  He also said that they will be appearing on a reality TV show called LA Sugar on the E! channel soon.


Talking about the chocolate they make


The chocolate squares with nuts and candy they make
We next got to go where the chocolate is melted.  He said that they have this machine going all of the time so that the chocolate never turns bad.  He mostly gets his chocolate from South America because buying Free Trade is easier there than in Africa.  He is the one that comes up with all of the recipes and they use high grade ingredients.

This is where the melted chocolate goes
After the tour the kids had to all get together to take a picture before they got their chocolate sample (nice bribing of us moms!).  We all got a chocolate with carmel in the middle.  The samples are pretty small and go for $2.50 each.  I had my piece and it wasn't too bad.  There was a lot of carmel, which masked the chocolate flavor for me.  Overall the tour was a lot of fun and it was nice to get out of our little bubble of a neighborhood and do something new.

Anderson and Nathan loved the chocolate!

On Compartes website they have this interesting article on Jonathon, the owner, that was recently done by the LA Times.  Also, on the website you can see the designs that they have on the chocolate that I was describing, not so well, above.

-Heather

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