Ah, le chocolat!!!... The long, lasting, passionate, immortal love story, shared by every single French person I've ever met... I mean I do actually know a French who hates cheese (although he might be the only one left, the shame of the nation!) but I've never ever seen anyone who openly declares that they don't love the dark concoction (and I don't have any hope to meet one, as I am told when researching for this post)
"The darker it is (=the higher the cocoa percentage it contains), the better!", this is how one of my ex-colleagues concluded the thoroughly explained chocolate theory (remember, any French can give a 3 hour speech on anything related to food. You've been warned!). So I officially became an oddity when declaring that I don't like chocolate: it happens that I have a bad childhood memory with something so bitter (like the communist era I was living in) that cut me forever the apetite to discover anything that looks like it. For me, quite the opposite works: the more it's mixed with milk and filled with anything other than cocoa, the happier I am! Ooops, I've just committed a cultural faux pas!
But, rest assured, the French nation has resolved to show me the light, because everywhere I turn to I will be chocolate-imagery-flooded. There are hundreds of chocolate bar types in supermarkets, in candy shops, in chocolateries (imagine entire stores dedicated to chocolate, with professionals having spent a couple of long years studying it in order to acquire the title of "maître chocolatier", chocolate master) and then I'm not even counting the books or the cooking shows presenting chocolate in every imaginable form and combination. Not to mention the all very popular chocolate fair held every autumn in Paris (and in the biggest cities all over France) "Le salon du Chocolat", where a "World Chocolate Masters" competition takes place and the "International Cocoa Awards" are granted...