Because I have two blogs of my own, plus several writing jobs besides, I decided this summer that I needed to keep a list of all of the blog posts that needed to be made. In the past, I did it simply by going through my iPhoto library until I found something that I hadn’t blogged about yet, but that was getting to be too disorganized.
However, even my organization allows things to slip through the cracks. I have five or six blog posts dating back so far (the oldest is from last April!) that every time it comes time to write about them, I don’t remember what it was I wanted to say.
But I feel badly for those little posts… they meant to make it out into this world, and now they’re just a few key words sitting in a Word document on my hard drive. Well no more! Starting here, with Cacao Sampaka, those posts are going to make it out into the blogosphere, where, hopefully, they will find readers to love them.
(Note to self: stop personifying blog posts. It’s weird.)
This all brings me to Cacao Sampaka, a chocolate shop in Barcelona that was recommended to me by one of my readers, Oren. Oren sent me an e-mail as soon as I posted that I was going to Barcelona in August, letting me know that this was the place to go for anyone who loved chocolate.
I suppose this is where most people who know me will look at the screen with a big… huh? You see, I’m famous for being the only girl anyone has ever met who isn’t obsessed with chocolate. And it’s true: I have eaten a ridiculous amount of Nutella, but in general, chocolate just isn’t my thing. Or wasn’t… until I realized the reason: it’s too sweet.
It’s like coffee: I like my coffee black and strong. No sugar, no milk. Sugar and milk turns one of my favorite beverages into something sickly, something not worth drinking. Black, on the other hand, coffee is my miracle. The same is true of chocolate: I’ve taken to buying baker’s dark chocolate because even the darkest chocolate bars found in the grocery store are too sweet for me. But one square of good dark chocolate, and my mind swims.
The people at Cacao Sampaka have the same philosophy. I saw someone drinking hot chocolate there (sadly, it was too late to order one by the time we arrived) that reminded me of the hot chocolate at Angelina’s here in Paris: thick, dark and satisfying.
Anyone who is into chocolate… and I mean good chocolate, owes it to themselves to pay a visit to this chocolate shop the next time they’re in Barcelona. Just the smell upon walking in lets you know you’re in the right place: most chocolate shops have a heady, heavy smell of burned syrup and cocoa, but in Cacao Sampaka, what you smell are the cocoa beans: strong, bitter and so similar to coffee that it’s a wonder I never realized before how heavenly good chocolate can be.
Cacao Sampaka
Consell de Cent, 292
Barcelona