If you love chocolate, you must visit Cacao Sampaka. We (or maybe just me) loved it so much in…read moreMadrid, that one of the first things we (okay, I) did was scout out the closest Barcelona location and make sure that we paid it a visit amongst all the Gaudi and dining we had planned.
What I really liked were the "collections" of different chocolates, arranged by "theme", and with 16 pieces to a box and at least 2 of each kind, so that you can savour each mouth-watering hit of deliciousness with someone else. This in itself is a bigger deal than it may seem, as I quickly realized that it's kind of lame when you say, "OMG can you BELIEVE how much like real truffle this tastes? Oh wait, I ate the only piece..." Wah wah.
There are 8 collections in all (you can by the entire collection of 64 pieces if you want!), which include single bean origins; dried fruits and nuts; spices; flowers and herbs; liquers; fruit; truffles; and innovations.
I've tried the single bean origins, fruit, and innovations collections, and am waiting to dig into a box of spices which made it with us back home. The single bean origins was fantastic, allowing us to compare and contrast the subtle notes, side by side, of chocolates from places like the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Granada, or Ecuador. The fruits were far from the overly sweet and pungent cream or jelly filled renditions one might be more familiar with, but crafted delicately so that the fruit flavours were gently infused into the chocolate itself. The innovations collection was, surprisingly, more variable in deliciousness that I might have expected, but interesting to see how flavours of soya or black truffle might sit alongside chocolate, or even parmesan cheese and balsamic vinegar.
What Cacao Sampaka has to offer extends far beyond just these collections, as there are a huge variety of not only other chocolates, but even wines to match. It really is a chocolate wonderland, and if it were not for the fact that our vacation had to come to an end, I would most certainly have been plunged into the depths of type 2 diabetes as my visits to Cacao Sampaka would have most certainly never ended.
