Brussels is full of chocolate.

Everywhere you walk in Brussels, you’ll find shops selling nothing but chocolate—in every single block—and often more than one. Sometimes it’s the big-name companies like Leonidas and Godiva, but more often it’s local chocolatiers.

The chocolates are ornate, colorful, often quite detailed, and sometimes you could honestly call them artworks.

chocolates on display

And they’re displayed as if they’re fine jewelry. Here (above) is a photo of a shop window we passed one evening. Below, you’ll also see a photo taken the same evening outside of Tiffany’s.

The jewelry is priced in the thousands.

The chocolate? It wasn’t marked.

Tiffany’s window

One store we passed was almost empty except for a long counter down one side and what looked like a huge lump of chocolate down the middle, being used as a display stand for a pitifully small selection of chocolates.

Down the opposite wall were a couple of long shelves with an equally sparse selection of chocolate bars (priced at between six and nine euros for a 100 gram bar). In the window there was an extremely big, gracelessly curly chocolate sculpture, and the whole shop was dramatically lit in green, for some reason. As you’d expect, a store with so little stock in so much space in such a prime retail location has absolutely exorbitant prices.

strangely empty chocolatier

So here’s my question: how do people who live in Brussels surrounded by chocolatiers—never mind the amazing quality of the bread and croissants here—avoid growing as big as a house? And if you know their secret, could you please share it with me?

Another post about chocolate.