Outside of Frederic Cassel in Fontainebleau

Fountainebleau is a town on the outskirts of Paris. We are here with Cyrus’ family who is visiting from the Netherlands and New York.
The town is famous for its palace and palace gardens which date back about 400 years. To be honest, I don’t know much about the history of the place. I’ve been too busy checking out the Fountainebleau food scene.

Kerstin at Frederic Cassel

Much to our surprise, Fountainebleau has at least 6 chocolate shops within about a 1km radius. We visited 2 of them today.
The first is a French franchise called “Jeff de Brugge”. Our B&B host purchased it and has given it to his daughter to run. He gave us a tour and explainded the operations of the business. The selling point seems to be that the chocolate used in production comes from their own cocoa bean coop in the Ivory Coast. It’s something that they advertise on their brochures and marketing material. It’s good to see that there’s a demand for responsibly traded cacao. The chocolate was o.k. I preferred the bark which used a 70% cacao over the bon bons.

The bon bons at the place up the street, on the other hand, were REALLY good. The shop is called Frederic Cassel and everything looked pretty wicked. There was a good selection of macrons as well as a other pastries, cakes and baked goods. I purchased a few bon bons to try and loved the bee pollen one I had earlier.

I’m a little concerned about my chocolate consumption as we approach the Salon du Chocolat which starts tomorrow! Cyrus and I will take the early train in to Paris and hope to get there when the doors open at 9am. There we will meet the great chocolatiers of Paris and France. Stay tuned for photos and updates in the coming days!

A fountain in Fontainebleau