Price of Heavenly Bliss = $44.00 a Pound

In my 22 years of life, I have made an effort to experience the world using one of my favorite senses, TASTE. As you can imagine, that means I've had the chance to eat a whole lot of food! I love all types of food, but there are definitely very specific items that stick out in my mind that have left an amazing lasting impression upon me. It's those special foods that trigger absolute happiness in my life, so I've decided to spread the happiness and share my experiences with you. And so begins a trail of posts that will chronicle some of my favorite foods I've had the pleasure of devouring!

There are so many foods I could begin with, but I figure that there's no wrong in starting the journey with a story about chocolate. When I was 16, I got my first retail job inside of Macy's Downtown San Francisco location. Tucked in between the food court and homewares section was the Neuhaus Chocolatier counter where I would remain in employment for a whopping 3 months. The counter was small and carried about 30-40 different varieties of dark chocolate, milk chocolate, marzipans, liquers, and whatever else you could think of. Each piece was imported from Belgium and made from amazingly fresh ingredients that had very short shelf lives.






This was the kind of fancy schmancy chocolate shop that was boutiquish and served as the sole supplier of gifts (which I gift wrapped and tied up with a pretty bow) for hopeful boyfriends on their first dates. If I wasn't an employee there, there wasn't a chance I'd ever be caught dead buying chocolate from this joint. $44 a pound on chocolate wasn't exactly my cup of tea at 16 years old. On the contrary, I did work at the shop and in order to become proficient in selling, I'd need to establish some product knowledge by the tried and true method of, you guessed it... SAMPLING!



In the span of three months that I was there, I tried everything I could get my grubby little paws on. Hands down, my favorite piece of chocolate from the collection was called the Caprice. Heavenly bliss being sold at $44 a pound meant that my little escape from the real world came out to about $2.50 for one piece of chocolate. The $2.50 was well worth it though. It began with a slightly bitter dark chocolate shell with a thin layer of toffee nougatine on the inside. The nougatine had the texture of rock candy with the flavor of perfectly browned caramel. The very inner core of the chocolate was the moneymaker. Underneath the chocolate nougatine shell, there was the most amazing fresh cream. The cream was extremely buttery and creamy with a hint of vanilla. Put it all together, and you get Neuhaus' Caprice, an amazing combination of all that is good in this world. If you ever get yourself to a Neuhaus, you must try this "to-die-for" piece of chocolate!