How to Buy Chocolate (A Layperson's Guide to Luxury)

A small disclaimer about me - I don't work for any company, and I am by no means an expert in the field. This is just a small selection of tips I wish everyone knew about buying and tasting chocolate.

Good chocolate should be a luxury. This whole article isn't about cheap little bars you find in the corner shop or newsagents. And there's nothing inherently wrong in liking them, either (I have a soft spot for mint Aeros, despite knowing how cheaply they're made, and about some really questionable ethics that Nestlé as a company has). But while most people know about cheap, 'everyday' brands, when it comes to luxury brands of chocolate, people often don't know what it is they're actually looking for.

In my opinion, the perfect luxury chocolate comes down to a few elements: taste, ethics, technique and ingredients. These elements are pretty interlinked, too - good quality ingredients very often come from a strong ethical drive behind the company, and this leads to a better technique when combining the ingredients, resulting in a fantastic taste.

A good bar of chocolate has a 'shiny' appearance - this comes from the chocolate being properly tempered - and will give an audible crisp 'snap' when broken up. (If you're interested in the tempering process and the science behind it, this website explains it far better than I could ever hope to.) These are excellent indicators that the maker knows the science behind making good chocolate, and that it has also been stored in the best conditions to ensure you get the chocolate tasting exactly as the maker intended. 'Blooming' is a technical term that refers to chocolate looking dusty/powdered with white. It occurs when chocolates have been stored incorrectly - usually at changing temperatures. It isn't necessarily an indicator that the chocolates haven't been tempered properly, but it definitely shows that storage conditions aren't quite what they should be at that particular store, for any variety of reasons (too hot, too cold, too humid...chocolate is a fickle beast!), and to perhaps think twice about buying from that store, and consider the brand a little more carefully in future.

If possible, I would try to taste the chocolate before I bought it. Obviously, in some places this could be impossible, but many places will offer samples of their products, and who better knows your taste buds than you? If you can't get a sample, consider buying a small bar to try before you commit to a larger purchase. How a maker treats it's cheapest product is indicative of how they make chocolate as a whole, so if you don't like a small sample of their product, you're unlikely to like their more complex products.

A chocolate ingredient's label can (and should) be a pretty easy read. The only essential ingredients to bar of chocolate are cocoa mass and cocoa butter. That's it. That's should be all you see on a 100% cocoa bar (as the name suggests - it's all cocoa). If you like your chocolate a little less rich, sugar is acceptable and if you prefer milkier chocolate, milk/milk solids is the way to go. And that's all that belongs in your standard bar of chocolate. If you see (and you probably will) soya lecithin/emulsifier...ask why. Similarly, vegetable oils (in particular, palm oil) shouldn't be a part of the process. Both of these cheapen the process and act as a filler. Not only that, but palm oils are terrible for you as a person, and even worse for the environment and the people that harvest it. Unfortunately, both are quite common, not only in chocolate but in many other types of food. There are makers that do keep it simple, but they may take a little hunting down. They're well worth it, though.

While we're looking at ingredients, check the expiration date. This depends on the type of chocolate you're buying, but you're looking for an expiration date that is as far into the future as possible, for the freshest possible product. Some makers do put a date of manufacture on their chocolate, which I love and wish more makers did, after all, if you have nothing to hide, you would, ideally, give your customers as much information as possible about how and when it was made. Plain chocolate can last for years in the right conditions, but after a month or so, with most brands there is a noticeable drop in flavour, and when fillings are involved, this can happen even sooner.

As a general rule of thumb, I like chocolate makers who are proud of where their ingredients are from. Why? Because they are being open and honest about their sourcing. It means that, with a little digging, practically anyone can look into the process, and find out how workers are treated and paid. Luxury products do not need to be made at the expense of other people, and I don't want my pleasure to come as a result of someone else's pain. It's such a simple thing, but a quick search of many companies can show that this isn't always as widely practised as we would like to hope.

If you've bought your chocolate, keep it in a cool, dry environment. A fridge can be too cold (and introduce moisture to the chocolate, which will make it bloom), so unless your home is particularly hot, a cupboard would suit it better. And while chocolate, even without preservatives, should have quite a long period of time where it is safe to eat, all chocolate tastes better the fresher it is.

If you'd like to read reviews of particular brands, of chocolate, I'd like to recommend Pleasure in Good Measure as a blog to follow. The writer behind the blog taught me a lot of the points about chocolate that I've bought up here. 

So, this has been a quick guide to luxury chocolate. There's obviously a lot more to this, and any single paragraph could be an essay in it's own right. Any single one of these points could be a starting point for more research (and I do recommend you research and not take my word for any point here). If I can distil this article down into one, more general point: be aware of the food you're eating and the products you're consuming. Ask questions. Research. Assume that most companies are not doing things for your best interest, they're doing it to make money. Be sceptical.

A London Primer For The Curious

To be honest, I wrote this more for my fiancée than anything. I wanted to make a list of the things people should know about London but never really get written down anywhere. Of course, if this helps the curious, from people who want to move or visit here to a writer looking for more information, then I'm happy to help (and if you have any more questions, please let me know below!)

View of the City of London at Dusk - Amelia Springett (2011)

The Newspapers 'City AM', 'Metro', 'Evening Standard' and the magazines 'The Stylist', 'TimeOut', 'The ES' and 'ShortList' are all free and distributed outside most Tube stations. The magazines are a really good way of keeping up to date on new events and fun things to do in the city. Feel free to take these when offered, or help yourself to one from the pile that usually lurks outside if there isn't a person to hand them out.

Be wary about accepting anything else a person is handing out on the street. This can be anything from religious dogma to a begging tactic (people will hand you an item like a flower and then try and get you to pay for it).

Supermarkets are where most local people buy food. From cheapest to most expensive, generally speaking, these are:

• Aldi/Lidl
• Asda/Morrison
• Tesco
• Sainsburys
• Marks & Spencer
• Waitrose

Eating out is really easy – virtually anywhere where there are people, there are restaurants and cafés of various cultures. It's also really expensive – even 'cheap' fast food is comparatively more expensive than some other countries. In many restaurants, service is not included on the bill, and it's considered impolite to tip under 15%. In most cafés, change is greatly appreciated as a tip.

Travel can be really expensive in London. From most expensive to least, generally speaking, your options are:

• Owning your own car/vehicle
• Taxis
• Mainline trains
• The underground/Tube/Overground network
• Buses
• Cycling
• Walking

Public transport is generally quite reliable in London, with most Tube services running a train every 3 minutes and most bus routes operating a daytime service of 5-10 minutes, with some offering 24 hour service. The exception to this is travelling on weekends, where planned engineering works are reasonably common, though they limit disruptions as much as possible.

Always use an oyster card in London. They can be bought at all ticket windows and some machines, and it's a card you preload with money to pay for tube and bus travel. Given that buses have recently stopped taking cash, your options are oyster or contactless credit/debit card or paper tickets. Paper tickets are ridiculously expensive and totally unneeded - if you are doing a lot of travelling in a day, and oyster card will cap off at the equivalent day roamer price, and every journey after that is effectively free. (For example, a single paper ticket for zone 1 is £4.80. On an oyster card, it cost £2.30 - under half! And if you make journeys after spending £6.40 on journeys that day, your oyster card will not be charged any more money, and you travel for free until midnight that day.) In theory, a contactless credit/debit card should work in exactly the same way as an oyster, except you don't need to preload it. I haven't tried it out for myself, yet.

Generally speaking, within central London, if a place is only one or two stops on the tube, then it will be faster to walk than get public transport.

Buses can't be hailed from any point on the route and they can't stop at any point on the route except at designated bus stop, unless in exceptional circumstances. Luckily, bus stops are quite distinctive and very common, as below. They always have a list of the buses that will stop there, the rough direction they're travelling in and the name of the stop itself. There is occasionally, but not always, a shelter along with the stop, which often has a map of local bus routes and what nearby stop they can be found at, and a map of night buses. They've recently added codes that can be texted to find out when the next bus will be, if there isn't an electronic display built into the shelter.

Picture sourced from here

Buses are a little more confusing than the tube, and I'd always recommend asking the driver before you pay, if you are unsure about the route and the area.

There is also the option of taking a boat up/down river. Of course, both locations would have to be near the river, but theoretically you could commute from North Greenwich to Blackfriars or Westminster. For infrequent journeys, it's about 4 times more expensive than the tube, but if you were to make that journey every day for a month, it's very similarly priced to the zone 1-2 travelcard for a month. Of course, the tube services more stops and a wider area, so it's unlikely to be better value, but in exceptional circumstances, perhaps!

A smartphone is a great tool to have in London. Lost? You have maps. Want to know if there's a bus route going where you want? There are many free apps available, usually with a tube map in there, too. Want to know if there's a branch of your favourite store nearby? Search for it. That being said, if you are lost in central London, there are helpful little posts with maps and directions to local landmarks quite commonly dotted around.

Most people live outside of central London and commute in to work. Generally speaking, if you can afford to live in zone 1, you are making quite a bit of money. However, there are little pockets of local council houses dotted around central London which are cheaper to live in, but are difficult to get and are becoming rarer.

Generally speaking, west and north London are more affluent areas than east and south London. There are exceptions - Brixton was formally seen as quite a rough area, but lately it's been revitalised as an art/culture/food hub. Similarly, Old Street was run down and shabby, but it becoming quite trendy.

Camden Lock is a great place to visit if you like alternative culture, street markets, music...even just fancy a canalside walk. Places of note include Cyberdog - a cyberpunk clothing/accessories store with the atmosphere of a nightclub; and the Horse Market - named for all the metal horse statues and the fact it once was a stables, you can find vintage clothing, intricate leather work, unique hand made gifts...and a fair bit of tourist-y garbage, too, to be fair. I would recommend taking a canal boat from Little Venice into Camden on a nice day - it's a relaxing journey that takes you through London Zoo and gives you a chance to see an entirely different side of London.

Camden Lock - By Amelia Springett (2011)

Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus aren't actually circuses in the sense of clowns and animals and acrobatics... It comes from the latin word for circle, in this context being a round open space. It's a posh way of saying junction or crossroads, essentially.

So, hopefully this is a helpful short guide for you. If you have any questions, or tips of your own to add, please don't hesitate to comment below!