Max, Zoe, and I took a tour of Charles Chocolates last weekend. We had to make reservations in advance and our first time and day was booked up. Needless to say this just added to the anticipation and excitement. Even Zoe seemed interested, although the main reason for bringing her was to see if we could get samples for her and then eat them ourselves as she has not been given chocolates yet for fear of food allergies. We all trundled into the car and arrived early. We were directed to wait in the "chocolate bar" a glorified hallway with a plexiglass window looking out into the nearly deserted chocolate making facilities. There were only 6 other people on the "tour" which seemed strange as the tour was so hard to book. The countergirl came over, plopped down a few boxes, and gave what was probably the saddest, learned by rote spiel I have ever heard. I will recount the speech as I remember it (no promises of veracity or accuracy). ""Charles" wanted to make chocolates to impress his girlfriend, he made the chocolates, suckers like you will pay $2 a chocolate, Charles is now rich and happy. Here is a sample, look through the plexiglass window, goodbye." That was the "tour" - looking through the plexiglass window at a guy in a white lab coat and hair net wandering through with some chunks of chocolate (bought from Guittard incidentally which you can get in the supermarket around here). "Lame" is a woefully insufficient word to describe this tour. After a 15 minute presentation and a couple of samples, I decided that-
a) Charles Chocolates sucks
b) Charles Chocolates is an over priced and over-rated chocolate shop
c) Charles Chocolates will no longer be visited by me unless it is to scarf down a few free samples and then leave without actually buying anything
I still can't believe it- a chocolate tour that sucked. One really has to work at making a CHOCOLATE tour suck.
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