Just off the Meir, Antwerp’s most important shopping street, is the one of the city’s most important monuments: the Rubenshuis. (Note: in Dutch, the vowel pairing ui is pronounced “au,” so you literally say Rubens’ house.) I was surprised at how massive it was; clearly, unlike other famous Dutch artists—Van Gogh comes to mind—Peter Paul Rubens enjoyed commercial success during his lifetime.
Unfortunately, with all the eating and shopping, Marlon, Yeho and I didn’t catch up to the Rubenshuis before closing time. To console ourselves, we backtracked to an interesting building just around the corner from the Rubenshuis—the Paleis op de Meir.
A 250 year-old building with an illustrious list of owners from Napoleon to William I of the Netherlands to the Belgian Royal family, the Paleis now houses a brasserie, heritage foundation, ballroom-turned-party-venue, and a chocolate shop. A visit to Belgium is not complete without a box of Belgian chocolates to take home, so we stepped into the latter for a visit.
The Chocolate Line is a Michelin-listed chocolatier established by Fabienne DeStaerke and Dominique Persoone in Brugge. This second shop in Antwerp works out of Napoleon’s former kitchen, which you can step into for a view of the chocolatiers in action.
Also on display in the the kitchen was a gown created for Miss Belgium entirely out of Belgian chocolate. I immediately notified our resident pageant expert, but he was unable to ID the candidate and year. If it were me, this dress would probably not have made it out of my boudoir. #nomnomnom
Dominique Persoone calls himself a “shock-o-latier” due to the unique and inventive flavor combinations used in his chocolates. The only thing I really found shocking in his shop was this giant photograph of nude models strewn in an alley, like corpses drizzled in chocolate. It reminded me of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre as depicted in the French film Queen Margot with Isabelle Adjani. Yikes.
Naturally, we couldn’t leave without sampling the goods. We settled on a box of 250 grams, or about 14 pieces, for €14.50.
Our box included such flavors as mocha ganache, coriander and salted peanut, basil with olives and sun-dried tomato chutney, and lavender.
What’s left of our box now: pralines with sake, wasabi, saffron and curry powder, and bacon. Yes, bacon. I’m saving that for last.
