Chocolate is an important food group in my household. After dinner each night, my husband and I eat small bites of dark chocolate for dessert. It’s a very measured, moderate indulgence and, I believe, almost like taking a vitamin thanks to the high antioxidant benefits of dark chocolate.
As I was strolling through a stretch of NorthPark Center I don’t usually frequent, I came upon Läderach, a bougie little chocolate boutique tucked away near Dillard’s. This beautifully merchandised store was filled on one side with rows of boxed chocolates, pralines, and truffles and on the other, a glass case filled with slabs of chocolate – dark, milk, white, pink, some filled – all kinds of chocolate. I found nirvana.
Läderach is a Swiss brand known internationally for its FrischSchoggi, fresh chocolate slabs that are handcrafted in Switzerland. Chocolate made in Switzerland is different from chocolate made elsewhere for two primary reasons: one, Swiss chocolate uses more milk and two; the Swiss method uses a manufacturing technique called conching, which mixes the chocolate for longer periods in a temperature-controlled machine to aerate and remove moisture from the product. The result is smoother chocolate with perfectly balanced flavor.
At the NorthPark Center location, there are about 14 different flavors of slabs at any given time, more when seasonal flavors come in. This location’s top three FrischSchoggi flavors are the hazelnut milk chocolate, caramel salt chocolate, and the strawberry curd white chocolate. Hazelnut milk chocolate is also the best seller worldwide.
Läderach offers specialty flavors such as the wildly popular Dubai milk chocolate and seasonal flavors Lemon-Yogurt white chocolate or the raspberry and passionfruit popcorn bark for summer months. Previous seasonal flavors currently unavailable include apple almond bark in milk and dark chocolate and apricot passionfruit popcorn in white chocolate. The company is always innovating and developing new flavors. I personally would like to see them create a dark chocolate pecan chili bark for the Dallas customer which, in my opinion, means me. I like caramel too, by the way.
Pre-packaged chocolates, truffles, and snacks such as chocolate covered almonds are available and beautifully boxed and bagged. Slabs of FrischSchoggi are sold by weight, and the price depends on the bark you buy. For example, I bought $6 worth of the hazelnut milk chocolate and the same amount of the raspberry blackberry white and got more of the latter for the money. I inhaled $12 of chocolate in 10 minutes and I’m not sorry about it.
NorthPark Center has three chocolate stores: Kate Weiser, See’s, and Läderach, a high percentage of confectioners for one shopping center. Each of these brands are as singular in audience and style for chocolate as Citroën, Toyota, and Aston Martin are for cars. They are each excellent and exist for the same purpose, but one is a little more artsy, one is more practical, and one is luxury. With one bite, you can tell Läderach is a premium chocolate made with the highest quality Swiss ingredients. Es ist wunderbar!
