at Thu, 20 May 2004 02:23:53 GMT in <ZEUqc.26428$gr.2357008@attbi_s52>,
(Geoff) wrote :

>I don't think many Americans have ever tasted good dark chocolate. In
>most stores you cannot find it.

You can find good dark chocolate in many, if indeed not most, stores in the
USA, thanks to Ghirardelli. Ghirardelli Bittersweet and Semisweet chocolate
are both excellent and widely available. It's also worth noting that
Ghirardelli Milk chocolate is also excellent - in fact, better than
virtually all of the European brands.

I think the real problem is lack of education. Very few people in the USA
(or for that matter, anywhere) are ever told that there even *are*
significant differences in quality between different chocolates, and many
people, once told, might not believe the differences are so starkly night-
and-day as they can be. It's hard to judge simply by looking at the
wrapper, especially when you have no clue which are the quality brands at
the outset. So there's a certain aspect of risk in buying a heretofore
unknown chocolate. Since chocolate is something most people buy as a treat,
why take the risk that your "treat" might turn out to be something you
don't like? Thus people tend to stay with the tried-and-true. It's
especially hard to convince someone to try something new when you're
talking about the difference between spending $4.00 on an unknown chocolate
and 50 cents on the known quantity. In a similar vein, that local mom-n-pop
diner just across the street might have much better food than the
McDonald's, but what's the probability that a random driver coming in off
the interstate is going to stop at each? It's not hard to see which one is
going to get more business.

The best way to approach this is to pass out good chocolate to anybody who
likes chocolate that you get to know. They'll quickly discover how vast the
differences are and it won't take long before you've got a new chocophile.
Kids are especially good with this because as I've noted before they'll
pretty much accept any chocolate proffered at them without preconceived
notions. And they'll learn. (Of course, you can end up creating a monster -
a kid who demands nothing less than outrageous quantities of extremely
expensive chocolate...)

--
Alex Rast

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