Monday, September 12, 2011

Juliette et Chocolat


I awoke in Montreal after a night of wide-eyed half-sleeping with a piercing headache and sour stomach. The sunlight seared my eyes. My skin emitted a nuclear heat underneath the sheets. While Dave smuggled some eggs, toast, and herbal tea from the continental breakfast, I took a long, icy shower. Doctor Dave diagnosed my disease: I had a chocolate hangover..

How could I have managed to eat that much chocolate? Excess seems to be my forte, especially when I’m travelling. For instance, I just ate most of a wedge of cheese that isn’t even mine. Dave bought it today at the Jean Talon Market. Neither of us knows what sort of cheese it is or what animal produced it – the vendor spoke almost no English – but that did not stop me from shaving most of it into my mouth while Dave was researching crepe restaurants.

And now to the source of the inevitable chocolate hangover: One dark chocolate fondue pour deux with an array of sliced fruit and one 78% dark Tanzanian hot chocolate at Juliette et Chocolat. This was, essentially, my dinner after watching Dave eat a smoked meat sandwich at the Schwartz’s on Meat Street. I was the lonesome vegetarian in a famous Jewish deli with a slice of buttered rye in my hand and a frown in my heart. I deserve chocolate; I deserve a lot of it, thought I.



Juliette et Chocolat specializes in hot chocolate and other melted sorts of chocolate. Pastries and little chocolate engravings of Kama Sutra images that I find very, very amusing are also available for the chocolate voyeur in us all.

Did you ever spend ten dollars on a single glass of hot chocolate that made you sick the next day? I did, and I regret nothing. This is not Swiss Miss. The last time I ordered a hot chocolate so thick that it required a spoon was in Prague, but this stuff had an entirely different taste and a clumpy, moussy consistency. The fondue pour deux came with two different percentages of dark chocolate and was entirely too much on top of the hot chocolate, but as I said before: I regret nothing.

Tomorrow I’m going to try to go to another chocolate shop that was closed today. A tip for anyone going to Montreal: Almost everything is closed on Monday, so don’t bother.

2 comments:

  1. I remember seeing Juliette et Chocolat while I was in Montreal. :) I believe it was near Fonduementale, where I got my fondue on! You keep finding fabulous insane-sounding hot chocolate and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I had some intense stuff in Montreal, but none of it was as solid as you describe. Yum.

    Well, a chocolate hangover means you're doing it right. ;) Though, it sounds like you may have a touch of chocolate vampirism. Let somebody know if you feel like stalking a glass a milk or stealing chocolate bars from babies. Stalks of celery twisted into religious symbols may be the only thing that can protect other's chocolate from you.

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  2. Why would you not go to a place called Juliette et Chocolate?!? Although I didn't see Fondumentale, so let's call us even. I found the restaurant by typing "Montreal Chocolate" into Google, by the way. I'm a girl who knows what she wants (chocolate). I was thinking about selling celery amulets on etsy to protect the world from that chocolate vampirism of which you speak.

    I cornered a glass of milk in an alley that night. Am I a monster, Liza?

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