Over the past few years, our family has come to love incorporating food into our travels. Whether it’s a food tour around the city or learning how to cook the local cuisine. Belgium is known for beer, waffles, fries, mussels, and, of course, chocolate. We had planned to sample all of it during our quick mother-daughter weekend, but since Belgium is home to Godiva, Neuhaus, and Mary, it seemed taking tour with an expert to sample the sweetness of Belgium would be worth the time and money.
I turned to Airbnb Experience and found the “Become a Chocolate Sommelier” tour by Yasmine. Born in Brussels, she is a certified chocolate taster and educator who developed a strong knowledge of the chocolate world (and traveled to many places to taste) by working for one of the few bean-to-bar chocolate-makers in Belgium.
Since Belgium just opened up to tourists, we were the first tour Yasmine had given in a while so we had a private tour of the different stores.
What to Expect from this Tour
A few years ago, our family took a similar tour in Paris focused on Macrons. I think I had been expecting something else so this tour sounded similar so I was a little more prepared.
Yasmine is a chocolate connoisseur. Most of my family loves dark chocolate, and she explained how it didn’t need to be bitter, as well as all the different textures and flavors we can detect in different types of chocolate with various percentages of cacao.
This two-and-a-half hour tour starts in the Royal Galleries, which is right in the heart of Brussels. You can literally go door-to-door visiting various chocolate shops in this beautiful building built in the mid 1800s. Yasmine takes you through the history of chocolate making in Belgium, a little bit about the science behind it, and how it is being made for the masses.
We visited several shops in the main city center, some famous ones and some you haven’t heard of. In each shop, she gives you a little background on the history of the shop, where they source (and make) the chocolate and some of the favorites. At each shop we had the chance to sample some of the shop favorites (like champagne truffles and pralines) or choose our own favorite. Those chocolates are included in the price of the tour. Not all tours involve the same shops. We visited Mary, Leonidas, Pierre Marcolini, Elizabeth, Maison Dandoy (waffles).
She does most of the talking about each location so we didn’t really talk with the shopkeepers at each location other than to collect the chocolate.
The Tasting
After visiting all the shops, we finished the tour with a tasting upstairs in a small shop off the Grand Place. Here my daughter and I had the opportunity to do some bean-to-bar chocolate tasting. Exploring the different percentages of cacao with the bars of chocolate we collected around town, we were able to side-by-side taste test across different brands. It was here that we discovered the Benoît Nihant chocolate, which Yasmine threw in for the final tasting. With each taste, we explored the different textures and hints of fruit or nuts.
The verdict? Benoît Nihant and Mary were our favorites.
In fact, we were so excited about the Benoît Nihant that we stopped at the factory in Liège on the way home to stock up on bars of chocolate.
