Every Thursday night, Le Chocolat Bar in Naperville holds free taste testings of its large selection of imported and domestic chocolates, from cocoa powder to dark chocolate truffles. Owner Cathy Bouchard has an expansive knowledge of chocolate, from its origin as the baby cacao pod and cacao beans to the various shapes in which it is produced, including authentic Mexican chocolate wafers, dark chocolate shavings, mini chocolate raspberry truffles, triple chocolate truffles, pure couverture chips and pure cocoa powder, all pictured here.
Some people love chocolate. Then there's Cathy Bouchard, who not only loves chocolate, but credits it with saving her life.The owner of Perfect Details gift shop in Naperville, Bouchard recently opened Le Chocolat Bar next door to share her passion with the public. At 2,000 square feet, the homage to chocolate is only slightly smaller than Willy Wonka's.
A nonfiction enthusiast, Bouchard loves diving into a subject, whether it be astronomy, pyramids or chocolate, and exploring it exhaustively. While reading about the Egyptian pyramids, she kept coming across stories about the Mayan pyramids as well. Eventually, she started exploring that topic and picked up on the repeated references to cacao and its healing and empowering tendencies. At about that time the fibromyalgia she had been suffering through had left her almost completely incapacitated. Nothing medicinal was helping. She prayed for either a miracle cure or for God to put her out of her misery.
When she turned to chocolate, she didn't think it was going to solve her problems. She just figured if chocolate was good enough for Mayan warriors -- who were said to take wafers and little else along with them to battle -- then it couldn't hurt her. She began eating two 1-ounce portions of chocolate a day. Slowly, she began feeling like her old self. Six weeks into her chocolate-eating regimen, she felt better than she had in years and was symptom free.
'I had my miracle,' Bouchard said.
And while she says it's possible that the chocolate isn't solely responsible for her return to good health, one trip through Le Chocolate Bar would probably show what little chance there is that she'd credit something else.
She receives weekly shipments from chocolatiers all over the country, who ship everything from truffles to chocolate bars and any other form of chocolate you can imagine. She gives free samples of just about everything at the store. It's part of her effort to increase sales, of course, but also to expose people to a variety of tastes and flavors that you can't get from the candy aisle at the nearby minimart. She calls it chocolate therapy, and plans on hosting monthly events devoted to the history and the mysteries surrounding chocolate.
'I want to start educating people about the benefits of chocolate,' she said. 'Good chocolate. Real good chocolate. Not Hershey's and Nestle's.'
While they have white- and milk-chocolate products, Bouchard tries to steer customers to the dark chocolate, which is a little bit bitter but has higher concentration of cacao. They serve chocolate desserts (they've got more varieties of turtles than the Brookfield Zoo and plenty of toffees and caramels as well), cakes, pastries, bulk chocolate items and cookware. They also serve more than a dozen different varieties of hot cocoa and coffee for those chocolate eaters who don't want another dose in their drink.
Le Chocolate Bar has a private area that can accommodate parties of up to 40 people. Bouchard also caters sweet trays and tables and designs wedding and other types of cakes.
Le Chocolat Bar
408 W. 5th Ave., Naperville, (630) 355-5720.
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays; noon to 8 p.m. Thursdays; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays; and closed Sundays and Mondays.
