Continuing the search for some good chocolate in Bruges, we stopped at Depla. Depla is the classiest of all in the region. A shop with dimmed lights looking sophisticated and neat. A long, rectangular shop with a counter following the wall which displays a series of ganache chocolate and some pre-wrapped blocks.
The shop is beautiful, making you want to enter it. It has nothing commercial to it, it's nothing like its competitors. No bags for tourists, no colors, no paintings and no marketing banners trying to sell more. Waking the vitrine, you can't but enter for a closer look.
Like Dumon, the highest they have is 75%, considering they use the same Callebaut chocolate. After all, they melt Callebaut and don't create their own.
To be able to have a proper comparison, I grabbed chocolate flowers, pieces of dark chocolate, a rice crispy cookie and two creations, ganache Mexico and ganache Sao Thomé. The experience was below my expectations.
The Sao Thomé, the darkest of all, is good with an interesting aftertaste as well as the Mexico, but neither melt in the mouth enough to put a smile on your face.
It was suggested I try the dark chocolate truffle: A deception. By 80%, I think they meant the butter content. Too buttery, too creamy and too heavy, those are far from being good truffles. On the other hand, I adored the dark chocolate rice crispy. A hard biscuit that's super crunchy where dark chocolate and rice crispy are mixed together. But I found those at all the chocolate producers, I won't say the one I had here is any different.
The rose looking chocolate bite is not bad, it's Callebaut after all. As for the chocolate bar with hazelnut, I can’t tell you how buttery it is. It looks like Depla is the king of buttery chocolates. Not recommended at all.
Rice crispy chocolate bites are the best.
What did I miss? Chocolate producers like Dumon and Depla are like any local chocolate producer we have in Lebanon, melting Callebaut into their shaped pieces. Believe me if I say that the ones I had at Sesobel are exactly the same.
Leaving Bruges, Depla and Dumon didn't impress me at all. If I had to choose one I’d pick The Chocolate Line. The best is still the fine producer from Belgium: Marcolini. Try Marcolini, you'll understand.
