Last year, when I returned from the Eko Chocolate Show in Nigeria, I shared how struck I was by Nigerians’ excitement at seeing Bioko Treat‘s Gari and Peanut Butter chocolate.
The experience made me conclude that our culture is, in fact, a crucial ingredient to consider as we push to increase chocolate consumption in Africa. Simply, the African yearns for African chocolate. And we must give her that.
Now, last October I was far away from home, in the city of love. Not for romance, but to experience people’s love for chocolate. I was with the founder of CocoaTown, Dr. Balu, at the Salon du Chocolat, in Paris.
Thanks to Spencer of Cocoa Runners and Kate of Cacao Latitudes, I found myself at a party at the Ecuador Embassy. It was all about celebrating chocolate from Ecuador, and there was lots of chocolate to taste from different brands. And for the first time, I tasted cocoa pulp juice (Kate sprinkled cocoa nibs in it. And I loved it even more). But that’s not the experience I want to share with you.
Instead, this:
I walked through the small crowd and appeared in front of the Pacari Chocolate stand. It was in a chandelier-lit library. Chocolate lovers gathered around a beautiful, colorful, arrangement of different bars of all kinds; milk chocolate, 90% dark, 100% dark, and so on. The flavor options were infinite.
Anyone who tasted a sample had something to say about the flavor, the beans, the roasting, the tempering, etc. Me? “It’s really nice (seriously, Ben. Nice? Really nice? That’s all?). It’s not that I didn’t like it. Often I did. I just never have words to describe the flavors.
Then came a couple (my guess) who tasted a 90% Pacari bar, and they were excited. The bar was made with flavor from Andean Rose. I was curious. I never imagined the flavor of a rose flower could end up in chocolate. And when I tasted it, it was nothing familiar.
I couldn’t say anything about it. In fact, I just realized, right now, that I don’t know the scent of a rose flower!
But this couple loved the chocolate. Even after trying another sample (I think it was coffee?), the woman said she could still taste the rose, and the man agreed. I thought they were making it up because my tongue had lost track of it.
And then, suddenly, it happened.
“This is made with lemongrass.”
I wasn’t expecting it. And at just the sound of lemongrass, my heart pounded against my chest with excruciating excitement. I opened my palm to let the sample bar drop into it from the stainless-steel tong, while I screamed a “Yes!” (In my head, of course).
Then I tasted it.
Now, something happens to me at the thought of lemongrass.
My mind takes me back to my auntie’s house in Dekpor, my hometown in the Volta Region of Ghana. In front of the house two huge clay water jars stay planted in the red sand, their mouths wide open to collect rainwater from the roof. And right beside each jar, there’s lemongrass, which we used for tea or in rice pudding for flavor. I was 6,615 km away from home (says Google Maps). But at that moment, I was home.
As my tongue clung to the nostalgia Pacari’s lemongrass chocolate had blessed me with, I waited (and yearned) for the couple to tell our host that this one is better than the Andean Rose-flavored bar.
No.
They couldn’t describe it much. They even claimed to still taste the Andean rose flavor!
And that’s interesting. Because, while I write this post, three months after tasting it, I can still taste Pacari’s lemongrass bar. And my eyes stare at this computer screen, but I’m typing blind. My mind can only see those two clay jars in front of Auntie Christie’s house, lemongrass beside each of them.
Chocolate taste is like a joke. It’s not funny if you can’t relate to it.
The couple got the Andean rose’s joke. I got that of the lemongrass.
Culture. It changes everything.