L’instant Cacao is particularly inventive with its fish balloons at 3 rue des Petits Champs

Sales of chocolate are so important for Easter in France that chocolate shops have been called “essential shops” like hairdressers and bookstores in the new lockdown law. I just read in Guide Lebey‘s newsletter, the guide of food and drinks which is sent out on Fridays, about a young chocolate creator, L’Instant Cacao at 3 rue des Petits Champs. The young Marc Chinchole is a true passionate and he makes everything out of a tiny kitchen. But you also have all the classical shops like Jadis et Gourmande and Marcolini or Alain Ducasse. Most of them deliver so don’t wait to order, Easter is around the corner.

Marc Chinchole has travelled around the world to find the best cacao beans

I don’t know if, like me, you have memories of Easter vacations in the country with your grand father giving you musical chicks or tasty chocolate bells. I have a weakness for rabbits and eggs full of “friture”, little fishes and tiny sugared eggs. This year again we will be hiding all sorts of painted hardboiled eggs in the tulips and crocuses and encouraging small children to find them. Hopefully Easter will be a sunny day. Marc Chinchole whom I met recently at his Palais Royal lab, has travelled around Latin America to discover sustainable plantations and select his beans. The large bags of chocolate beans lying in his tiny shop also indicated St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Filling up the fish balloons

He is passionate about the pure origin of products and makes every single item himself. A 2019 laureate of the City of Paris “Goût d’entreprendre” Prize, he is looking for a larger space for making the chocolate while his mother, formerly a dentist like his father, will eventually be in charge of the shop. He has two wonderful fountains for dark chocolate and milk chocolate and makes his own tablets with beans from Guatemala, Mexico, Cameroun, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Belize, etc. This week end je was busy full time filling in his balloon fishes for a large order. It’s quite comforting to see how each product is made throug the glass window of the shop.

The tiny shop and tiny lab are separated by bags of beans

A few meters away, at n°11,  Alain Ducasse‘s new shop is very grand and luxurious and almost looks like a Medieval apothecary. A stark contrast from the modesty of the previous one. The chef with 9 Michelin stars, who is now a citizen of Monaco! has developed a range of 12 chocolate shops in Paris and one in London. For Easter he designed lobsters, sardines, crabs, rabbits and eggs in chocolate: they all look like sculptures with an almost cubist style. He also puts forward in the decor, chocolate beans and bags, to prove his authenticity.

Trendy cubist fishes at Ducasse

Alain Ducasse makes all his chocolates in a Manufactory at 40 rue de la Roquette near the Bastille. And the decor of his shop is obviously very sophisticated. I tasted a chocolate with ginger which was excellent. There are many other chocolate stores and on  the same street rue des Petits Champs, you can even buy those of Comptoir des Abbayes, which specializes in products made in convents and abbeys.

A fashionable “turned egg” at Ducasse

So do not hesitate this year to indulge for Easter which is next Sunday. All these manufacturers deliver.