Jeff de Bruges in Paris

Yesterday I decided to try out Jeff de Bruges, a chocolatier with branches all around Paris. I had never heard him mentioned by Clotilde or David so I was wary, despite many online forum members rejoicing in him. In the end, the results were mixed. It started off so well though! My first taste was their fabulous apricot ganache - it ranks up there with the lemon ganache at Patrick Roger. It's really apricotty and smooth.

But then I tried their new tarte tatin apple flavour, and it was blatantly made with a synthetic apple flavouring! So was the pear truffle. They both reminded me of the time back in the day when our IB chemistry class made esthers. They were beyond disappointing. They verged on being outright bad.

Slightly better, but also very uni-dimensional, was the orange chocolate truffle. I tried the "euro" caramel which was a little too sweet for me. I suspect that Jeff de Bruges takes more than the occasional shortcut with their flavours.

Their gianduja was very good, although gianduja is pretty hard to screw up. I also had a dark chocolate caramel that was very woody and dense, and very interesting - I've never had such a dark flavour in a caramel. I finished up with the caramel truffle and the truffle nature, and both were very good, though not as good as La Maison du Chocolat's truffles.

The only real standout was the apricot though. I'd like to go back to get it again, since this shop is much cheaper than the higher tier chocolatiers. But, as usual, nine times out of ten you get what you pay for. The apricot ganache is that lucky one time exception. But definitely give all his other fruit-based flavours a miss.