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:
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.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

My husband and I went to the Ghiradelli Factory in San Francisco in 2002?? It was the only time I've even been to California. We drank hot chocolate in July at night. It was such a fun trip. We did mostly very touristy things...but we had a blast.

Anonymous said...

Oh my, Bongga Mom! You had me craving for some chocolates :) I will buy one nga later...

Bea said...

Oh, the envy! The desire! Why, oh why, is San Francisco so far away???

Amanda said...

Poor CleanBoy! I'd have crafted chocolate sculptures in the backyard after that, still disappointing him, but he'd've laughed.