Oct 18 – EuroChocolate Festival in Perugia

Aneisa and I at EuroChocolate.

For my Pairing Food & Wine class we took a feild trip to Perugia on the opening day of the grand EuroChocolate Festival. It’s apparently the biggest chocolate festival in the world and lasts for a whole 9 days!

Fortunately for us it was only a 2.5 hour bus ride south. Although,…we were on a double-decker that sorta swayed back-n-forth, thus causing everyone to feel a bit sick. On the way back it was even worse because we all had a bunch of free chocolate in our stomachs.

The crowded streets

Allora, the festival was pretty cool. It took up about 9 or 10 blocks down one street and 9 or 10 back down a parallel street. There were tents/vendors everywhere, all with some sort of chocolate product (ie, chocolate drinks, chocolate liquer, chocolate pasta, chocolate bars, chocolate covered bananas, chocolate baci [italian version of chocolate Kiss], etc). Some tents were major chocolate companies like Toblerone or Lindt, and then there were your smaller local companies. The European version of Dannon was there–”Danone”. They were passing out free chocolate pudding. Yum!

Melissa, Aneisa and Vanessa enjoying Cioccolato Caldo. I wish you could've seen Melissa absolutely freak out over how good this stuff is. YUM!

We bought this €5 ChocoCard that allowed you to get a bunch of “free” samples at certain tents (Danone was one of them). My favorite “free” sample would have to be the Cioccolato Caldo (hot chocolate). Italian cioccolato caldo is nothing like American hot chocolate, besides being well… hot and errr.., chocolate, of course. Anywho, cioccolato caldo is so thick you don’t know whether or not to drink it or eat it. I’ve had it a couple times since the EuroChocolate festival and some people make it so rich you almost need a glass of milk to drink alongside!