la_rainette | Chocolate run

I'm half French, half German and I have lived in England, France and Canada. So I tend to see myself as, well, not quite rootless, but still pretty flexible. I certainly don't consider myself as food-obsessed, as I will grow fidgety and increasingly bored after the third appetizer and find it hard to sit still during the 5 hours required to consume a decent French Christmas dinner - said 5 hours being mainly dedicated to a heated and passionate discussion about food and wine.

And then, all of a sudden, my French roots came back with a vengence and bit me on the butt.

I suddenly had to have Valrhona chocolate. Just had to. Because it is the best chocolate, because the flavour is just so strong and subtle, well, just because, you know. So I look them up on the Internet, just to find out if they have a distributor here in the big T.O., and it turns out they have. I call them, ask them where I can buy the chocolate, and they tell me to just come on over.

The place is by the Airport. That's a 40km drive. What I wouldn't do for a piece of chocolate... So off I go, and it takes me longer than I expected to locate the smallish non-descript door leading to the place. A big warehouse, with just a wall that separates the merchandise from the people who work there, on their computers, taking orders and suchlike. So here I am, tadpole in tow, at the wholesale place, asking if I could please just have one single small box of Valrhona dark chocolate. (Small still being 3 kg, i.e. over 6 lbs. Can you OD on chocolate?)

This was weird. Imagine knocking on Bill Gates door and asking to buy one single license of Microsoft Word. Yeah, that kind of weird.

But now I am happily munching on a piece of Valrhona chocolate, and thinking that tomorrow morning for breakfast I will go buy croissants at the local French boulangerie-patisserie, and chat with my French friends (because this is how you meet us: just follow the smell of freshly baked croissants in the morning.)

And I feel ever so deeply French. Huh. Had to go as far as Canada to find that out.