Our Chocolate Orgy

photo courtesy of Ghirardelli's

For those of you who think that San Francisco is a cold, foggy city with too many weird people and too few parking spaces, I have three words for you: Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival.

Today we headed up to Ghirardelli Square , home of the famous Ghirardelli Chocolates, for their 12th annual salute to that most sinful and decadent of treats: chocolate. Twenty vendors showed off their most luscious chocolate treats, and the hungry public got to sample them. The five of us shared a 15-sampler pass for $20 which left us stuffed to the gills with several extra squares of chocolate to take home. Our favorites:

• A small version of Ghirardelli's world-famous Hot Fudge Sundae;


• A chocolate dessert from the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. that tasted like molten lava cake with raspberries and cream;


• Irish Coffee from O'Neill's Irish Pub;


• A cup of Starbucks' pumpkin spice latte.

So was it worth the trip? Alfie, lover of chocolate that he his, wished it had been more of a connoisseur event, with more artisanal chocolates, truffles and other exotic chocolate treats (with vendors such as Scharffen Berger or our favorite, Annette's of Napa Valley). He has a point; it should have been called Chocolate Baked Goods Festival since the majority of offerings being cookies, brownies and such. And for me, tightwad that I am, I think most of the vendors were quite stingy with their servings (a 1/2-inch cube brownie sample which costs about $1.25? Cmon!). I had to keep reminding myself that proceeds from the event were benefitting Project Open Hand.

The kids, of course, enjoyed eating more chocolate than they would ever get in a month. CleanBoy, however, declared himself to be as disappointed as his dad. He declared, "The chocolate festival was boring". Later we found out he thought he would be visiting a Willy Wonka-type Chocolate World: his idea of a chocolate festival involved chocolate people and chocolate buildings and chocolate trees. With those expectations, we'd be disappointed too.