Paris is serious about its food, and has long been a capital of chocolate, being the home to La Maison du Chocolate, which is now something of a confectionary empire, with outposts from New York to Tokyo.
A less-widespread but no less impressive chocolatier is Patrick Roger, whose St. Germain boutique is a temple to cocoa.
This is quite a different experience from other chocolatiers, not just in familiarity but in offerings. Patrick Roger focuses on classic bars of chocolate, presented elegantly and simply in bright mint-green wrapping.The boutique is a library of chocolate, and this return to the basics is a uniquely straightforward approach in a crowded chocolate landscape.
The store’s back wall is arrayed with an organized variety of such bars, with various grades of cocoa content and color, and country of origin, labelled simply as such (The City Present recommends the bars of African dark chocolate, such as the São Tomé 88%).
Boutique Patrick Roger 108 Boulevard Saint-Germain 75006 Paris, France 01 43 29 38 42 www.patrickroger.com Tweet
