Amy M. Thomas
New York Times News Service

Chocolate – like fashion, wine and finance – has become a complex cultural phenomenon. There is basic chocolate for the masses, artisanal chocolate for purists, and avant-garde creations for connoisseurs. In Brussels, a polyglot city at the geographic and cultural crossroads of Europe, you get it all.

The capital of Belgium may be known as the Capital of Europe, but it is also, at least as far as most chocolate aficionados are concerned, the World Capital of Chocolate. Ever since the Brussels chocolatier Jean Neuhaus invented the praline 100 years ago, the city has been at the forefront of the chocolate business. There are a million residents and some 500 chocolatiers, about one chocolatier for every 2,000 people. The average Belgian consumes more than six kilograms of chocolate each year, one of the highest rates in the world.

But these days, the industry is changing. With countries like Germany and the Netherlands becoming larger European exporters, in Belgium, a new class of chocolatiers is finding innovative ways to hold on to the country’s chocolate crown. They are breaking away from traditional pralines – which Belgians classify as any chocolate shell filled with a soft fondant centre – and infusing ganaches with exotic flavours like wasabi or lemon verbena, and creating such imaginative pairings as blackcurrant and cardamom and raspberry and clove.

I had gotten a taste of Brussels’ classic-contemporary chocolate dichotomy in 2010 on an overnight sojourn from Paris. But between the flea marketing, beer sipping and art nouveau strolling – other big draws of Brussels – there was little time for chocolate.

So this fall I returned, intent on exploring three centuries of chocolate history in three days. It was an ambitious task: The city is home to two of the biggest chocolate companies in the world, Godiva and Leonidas, as well as scores of boutique chocolate-makers and haute chocolatiers. To streamline my sampling strategy, I turned to Robbin Zeff Warner, a U.S. expatriate and a former professor of writing at George Washington University who has been blogging about Belgian chocolatiers since her husband’s post with NATO took them to Brussels in 2008.

“You have chocolate for tourists, and chocolate for Belgians,” Warner said of the national hierarchy in which chocolate produced by manufacturers like Cote d’Or and Guylian are devoured in vast quantities, but mostly by the city’s 6 million annual visitors. Bruxellois, Warner said, prefer the artisanal makers. “The big-name big houses are great. But seeing and tasting real handmade chocolate, while buying it from the person who made the chocolate, is something special.”

To prove her point, as we were leaving Wittamer, the century-old chocolatier in the centre of the city that seduces both locals and tourists with its heritage recipes, Warner suggested we go to Alex & Alex, a nearby Champagne and chocolate bar. Although its chocolates, made by Frederic Blondeel, aren’t made on-site, they’re acknowledged in some circles as some of the best in the city.

The bar is tucked away on one of the antiques store- and art gallery-filled streets that shoot off the Grand Sablon, Brussels’ central square. Its dark, cosy interior, along with the glass of Drappier rose and array of square bonbons before me, was a lovely respite from the trolling chocolate tourists outside. I found the herbaceous notes of Blondeel’s basil ganache too reminiscent of pesto, but the “Alex’Perience” chocolates were another story. The first velvety impression of high-quality chocolate was followed by a flood of sweet, fruity cassis.

I spent the afternoon circling the Grand Sablon, which, with no fewer than eight chocolatiers, is the city’s epicentre of chocolate. I sampled golf-ball-size truffles at Godiva and moulded hamster heads at Leonidas; organic nougat from Pure and minty ganaches at Passion. At Neuhaus, I tried a dark chocolate truffle filled with buttercream and with speculoos, a spicy Belgian cookie.

The more I strolled, the clearer it was that the level of sophistication is evolving. The packaging and presentation at newer chocolatiers is as slick as a Place Vendome showroom, while the associated terminology – like “cru” and “domain” – is akin to what you’d hear from sommeliers. Such was the case at Pierre Marcolini’s two-story flagship. Smiling saleswomen stood over the glassed-in display of small, rectangular bonbons that looked as exquisite as jewels. Backlighted shelves on the opposite wall showcased what Marcolini is famous for: his single-origin Grand Cru chocolate bars.

My museum outing the next morning was amusingly different. Before I put my change away at the entrance, I was presented with a cookie that had been run under a spigot of molten chocolate. I was inside the rickety 314-year-old Museum of Cocoa and Chocolate, just in time for the next demonstration, presided over by a bushy-browed man in a fluorescent-lighted kitchen with a vat of chocolate before him.

Europe, I learned, was introduced to cocoa beans when Spanish explorers brought them back from what is now Mexico in the late 16th century. They reached Belgium about 100 years later. When King Leopold II colonized the African Congo in 1885, largely for the cocoa crops, the resulting genocide was a dark moment in the country’s history. It is also when Belgian chocolate started earning its formidable reputation.

Outside the museum, I dodged the camera-wielding tour groups gathered before the magnificent Grand’Place, with its 15th-century Town Hall and rows of guild houses, and walked down narrow streets lined with friteries and waffle stands.

Soon the cavalcade of chocolatiers continued in the Galerie de la Reine. La Belgique Gourmand, Corne and the original Neuhaus were at home under the soaring glass ceilings of this graceful fin-de-siecle shopping arcade. But as big business as those Belgian brands are, none are national gems the way Mary is.

The 92-year-old chocolatier is a favourite of the Belgian royal family, and with its rows of caramel, marzipan, chocolate mousse, ganache and cream-filled pralines, it was easy to see why. Mary makes small batches of chocolates, so they don’t have to be stored, which is when they lose their flavour. Buzzing from the caramelized hazelnut pralines the saleswoman had offered as a sample, I found myself leaving $70 lighter, but two boxes of pralines and several chocolate bars richer.

Compelled to dig deeper into the city itself, I ambled down the crooked Rue des Bouchers, avoiding eye contact with waiters trying to lure me into their cafes for buckets of mussels. I found the big shop windows of Ste. Catherine, an area popular with artists and fashionistas. The 30-minute walk across town felt like a tour of different cities. I passed quirky second-hand shops in the gentrifying Marolles neighbourhood. After crossing the wide, looping Boulevard de Waterloo, the landscape became hillier and the architecture uniform. I was in St.-Gilles, a bonanza of art nouveau.

On my previous trip, I had visited the neighbourhood’s crown jewel, the Horta Museum, once the home of the art nouveau architect Victor Horta. There was no time for a repeat visit; I was due for a class at Zaabar, a modern chocolatier nearby that is known for its use of foreign spices like cardamom from Malabar, star anise from China and chili pepper from Texas.

My workshop started with the instructor dramatically pouring a bowl of melted chocolate on a marble-topped table as the seven of us international students nearly swooned from the intoxicating aroma. He quickly worked two spatulas through the puddle, keeping it in constant motion. This process, called tempering, is when crystals form, giving chocolate, when it hardens, its sheen and snap.

When it had cooled to the proper working temperature of 32 degrees Celsius, he divided the still-liquid chocolate between two bowls, scraping the film left behind into neat lines. It was a valuable byproduct: cocoa butter, which is largely responsible for making Belgian chocolate superior as local chocolatiers refuse to supplement it with vegetable oils or shortening, as is done in some other countries.

After the instruction came the fun. We dipped dollops of ganache into our chocolate and rolled them in crushed amaretto cookies, Brazil nuts and powdery meringue, creating imperfect, but tasty, truffles. We poured chocolate circles and studded them with cashews, pistachios, almonds, dried cranberries and raisins, producing delicacies known as mendiants. Soon we were on our way, with enough treats to satisfy a kindergarten class, or two.

After the class, I wandered through Ixelles, and into Moss & Bros., one of the area’s many trendy clothing and housewares boutiques. I fell into a conversation with the shopkeeper – about chocolate, naturally. She told me about her favourite chocolatier in the city, Laurent Gerbaud, and insisted I visit.

Which is how I found myself in Gerbaud’s atelier on the busy Rue Ravenstein the next morning, gazing at a spread of satiny bonbons with figs from Izmir, ginger from Guilin and hazelnuts from Piedmont. Such reliance on global ingredients is what sets apart this new generation of chocolatiers. And as they continue to push the boundaries of creativity, they’re also rewriting the history of Belgian chocolate