The Chocolate Lovers’ Guide to Prague

This time, though, we’ve put together a quirky guide to Prague for the chocoholics amongst you. Whether you head to a spa to get wrapped in the stuff, or merely soak up the themed décor at the Chocolate Hair Salon while having a trim, there are more ways to enjoy chocolate than just eating it – although you’ll most likely want to do that, too, so we’ve also included our lowdown on Prague’s chocolate themed eateries as well as some tips for getting your hands on a decent everyday chocolate fix.

When we neglected to include Choco Café U Červené židle, in our hot chocolate round up, there was an outcry. This delightful chocolate-themed eatery, tucked away near Betlémské Náměsti in the heart of the Old Town, Choco Café serves up the most divine hot chocolate imaginable: it’s just the silky smooth good stuff melted down then served up in a cup. The result is so unctuous you’d struggle to swim through a river of it even if you wanted to. With more than twenty different kinds of the café’s signature drink on offer, this really is a chocoholic’s paradise. There’s also a confectionary-free lunch menu featuring copiously filled baguettes and a generous side salad.

Chocolate Massage
If you love chocolate but fear piling on the pounds, don’t despair: there’s at least one zero-calorie way you can indulge yourself. After incorrectly being blamed for acne, chocolate has become the magic ingredient in spa treatments worldwide. Mystic Temple offers a chocolate wrap which involves being enveloped in Brazilian velvety goodness for thirty minutes before finishing off with a gentle oil-based massage. This sensual experience will set you back 1650 CZK for 90 minutes. The Prague 6 based health centre Cordeus also offers a chocolate massage (800 CZK for 60 mins; 1000 CZK for 90 mins) as do Thai Fit massage studios (60 mins; 900 CZK).

Prague has its fair share of quirky museums aimed at cashing in on the tourist dollar. If you’re stuck for somewhere to take your relatives during their next visit and fear the Museum of Sex Machines might be too X-rated, give Choco-Story a whirl. In the blurb on its website, the museum promises to bring the 4000-year-old history of that much-loved treat to life through words, pictures, and flavours. Some of the exhibits are a bit cheesy – there are rather a lot of mannequins in odd poses with dodgy wigs – but who could pass up the chance to see an eighteenth century cocoa cup especially designed for gentlemen with a moustache? The ticket price also includes a chocolate-making demonstration where you’ll get the chance to nibble on at least one Belgian praline. There are worse ways of whiling away an afternoon with your nearest and dearest who’ve already seen the other sights.

Milka, with its iconic purple cow, just doesn’t cut it for me in the taste stakes. Neither does Orion, with its pitifully low cocoa content and sickly taste. The more discerning can hunt down a bar of organic Fair Trade favorites Green and Blacks or Divine at your nearest health food shop: Country Life stock them both. Homesick Brits can get their hands on Cadbury’s Dairy Milk at their nearest branch of Roberston’s ; Americans with a sweet tooth can indulge their cravings for Hershey’s at The Candy Store. Marks and Spencer do a decent range of chocolate bars at around the 50 CZK mark, and the Tesco Finest range, available in larger stores, is also a pretty safe bet. The Albert Quality Milk Chocolate I taste-tested for this piece was a disappointment. On a recent thread titled Best Chocolate in Prague?, the JD Gross range by Lidl was recommended as a satisfactory everyday sugar fix.