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Recently: Charmed by chocolate

Posted on December 6, 2007 by Staff

 

By Valarie Schwartz

There may be a delicious, downright decadent way to not gain weight: Mid-morning hot chocolate followed by a piece of (preferably dark) chocolate in the afternoon or evening.

If I’d met Bob Droog before he opened up his luscious Chocolaterie Stam in Chapel Hill North this past March, perhaps my suspicions could be proven. But I’m willing to put it to my own test.

My experiment started in early November during a meeting at a local coffee café. Having given up coffee and caffeinated tea in January, the chill in the air that morning tempted me to order hot chocolate.
It was around 2:30 when I realized I hadn’t had lunch and after 3 before I felt hungry. A small, healthy snack satisfied me until dinner.

Over the summer, my internist had told me about Chocolaterie Stam. When I told him that chocolate was my only caffeine, he peered over his glasses and in a conspiratorial tone asked, “What kind?”
He wanted specifics, and after I gave them he asked if I’d been to the chocolate store and told me about it.

Later that week, I went.

We can all be grateful that Droog, who grew up in a suburb of Amsterdam, chose chocolate as his drug of choice. We can legally enter his denizen of cacao delights and, bathed in the glow of several dozen chandelier lights bouncing off the deeply colored walls, order our favorite Dutch chocolates to take home and savor in solitude, or settle into seating almost as sumptuous as the treats that brought us calling. We can be like those of all ages who visit from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday; the morning wave, drinking a cup of coffee, chocolate or the most popular drink — mocha — and eating a pastry; the soccer moms needing a pick-me-up around 4; or the after dinner, last-stop-before-going-home group that frequently includes married couples on date-night, lingering in the Old World-like ambience.

Before opening the store in March, Droog, who moved to Chapel Hill in 1998 as a sales representative for a Danish company, traveled regularly, hitting every state in the continental United States. When he married Lee-Ann three years ago, he started looking for a way to stay home. He had grown up eating Stam’s chocolates and knew that the Dutch company had branched out to the U.S., with five stores in Iowa, of all places. He called the offices in Iowa on a Thursday, had a meeting the following Monday and was granted the opportunity to live and work by chocolate.

“I always wanted to have my own store,” Droog said. Working out at the gym has been replaced by his new routine, which includes eating at least one chocolate every hour that he works.

Last week when I shared my hot chocolate discovery with Droog over a cup of the best hot chocolate I’ve encountered (made with Maple View Farms chocolate milk and Van Houten cocoa, served in Delft blue china that frequent customers call “the magical cups”), he realized that with all the chocolate he eats, he hasn’t gained weight.

“If you are getting something you like and it satisfies your taste, you’re not going to be looking for more,” Droog, 39, philosophized. “If you eat something that doesn’t satisfy, you keep looking for, and eating, more.”

Eat chocolate, drink chocolate, buy chocolate gifts, and if you do, treat yourself to a visit to our own little chocolate paradise at 1820 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. near Harris Teeter.
You’ll be charmed, I’m sure.

Contact Valarie Schwartz at 923-2746 or valariekays@mac.com

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