The Chocolate Museum, Guadeloupe
Just seeing the bright hand-painted sign above the entrance to La Maison du Cacao (The Chocolate Museum) in Pointe Noire, Guadeloupe, was enough to make me happy.
The truth is that pretty much anything chocolate-related makes me happy. I’m an addict.
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The Garden
The museum is set in a small grove of cacao trees, making it easy to see the development of the bean.
Signs explain cacao’s unique properties as well as its cultivation, sometimes with quite amusing translations.
“Although chocolate is considered as an exceptional food, comprered [sic] to one of the seven deadly sins, which provides pleasures and benefits, to justify our implicit passion!“
Here’s an interesting factoid from the grove: Belgium consumes the most chocolate of any country at 10.7 kilos per inhabitant per year. Not surprising given the quality of their chocolate! Here in the Netherlands, the total is only 4.4 kilos, while in the US, each person consumes 5.4 kilos.
To read about all the best things to do in Guadeloupe, see my guide to Guadeloupe!
Inside the Chocolate Museum
The real action of this museum, though, is inside, where the demonstrations take place. It’s a rather chaotic place, and would be better if it had scheduled demonstration times. It took me a while to figure out what was going on with the two clumped crowds in one large open-air room.
It turned out that two separate demonstrations were going on at two neighboring counters, and the visitors weren’t necessarily listening to what was being explained. This could very well have been because so many were children; they weren’t particularly interested in anything but tasting the chocolate.
If you’re planning a trip to Guadeloupe and prefer not to do it on your own, here are some tours you could sign up for!
I was eventually able to shoulder my way to the counter, coming in halfway through an explanation of how cacao is transformed into chocolate. The extremely patient woman behind the counter went through each step, mostly using hand tools like a counter-top hand-cranked mill.
Here are some other quirky and/or interesting things to see in Guadeloupe:
- Guadeloupe’s Quirky Banana Museum
- The Rum Museum: Another Quirky One!
- The Paradise in “Death in Paradise”: Deshaies
After each step she’d place the result on a dish so it could be passed around and touched and tasted. If a step in the process was more time-consuming, she’d walk away and fetch a sample from a cupboard to show us.
The fragment of the demonstration I saw was interesting, and I would have liked some quiet so I could have heard more clearly what the woman was saying, especially since my French is sketchy at best. At the end the woman offered some small bits of plain chocolate with different degrees of sweetness, but it certainly wasn’t the generous helpings we were offered at the Valor factory tour.
Besides explaining the process, the woman explained the different qualities of chocolate. I had always wondered why one brand of chocolate can be so much better than another’s while using the same ingredients. If my French was better, as well as my hearing, that distinction would be clear to me now.
The last stop in the museum is, of course, the shop, or rather, one counter with a display case. This was as mobbed as the demonstration counter, so I never got to sample more of their chocolates.
Perhaps I was just unlucky to visit at a busy time. If it’s like that all the time, the management needs to either expand or reorganize. Nevertheless, I was bound to enjoy it, given the subject matter.
Are you a chocolate fiend like I am? Leave a comment below!
The Chocolate Museum: Pointe Noire, Guadeloupe. Route N2, on the west coast of the western “wing” of Guadeloupe, about halfway between Mahaut and Pointe Noire.. Website (in French). Open Monday-Friday, 10-17:00. €8/$9.
We’ve visited several chocolate museums that explain the process of growing and making this food as well as great ideas and recipes on the many ways it can add to a main dish or be transformed into a treat. Like you, I consider myself a chocolate addict with no plans to ditch this passion any time soon! I believe there are several studies showing that chocolate stimulates the release of endorphins that explains the happy glow – all I know is I love it all its forms.
I love when new studies come out in favor of eating dark chocolate every day. It seems to reduce the risk of heart disease, for example. Sounds good to me!
This looks right up Doreen’s alley!
Such a shame you didn’t get to sample more…
Yes, I’d like to get the expert’s opinion on their chocolate!
What no samples….that’s always the best part. Surprised they didn’t let you sample at each step of the process so you can understand how each stage effects the taste and final product.
They did! And they let us pick up and handle it too. Though before there’s any sugar added, it’s awful tasting!
What better than a visit to a chocolate museum? Maybe a chocolate museum with ample samples 😉
The Valor factory tour gave less information but ample samples!
We have been to many chocolate museums and factory tours around the world and this sure looks like a good one. From your stats I think that we need to be eating more of it to catch up with the averages.
Go for it!
The demonstrations sound very interesting. I have yet to visit a chocolate museum anywhere in the world. I will have to change that
Go! It’s always interesting, and usually tastings are involved!
Chocolate makes us happy too :-). This museum looks like a yummy place to visit in Guadeloupe…
Doesn’t chocolate make everyone happy? 🙂