Chocolate!

The travelmobile took us to a small town northeast of San Jose where Sibu Chocolate has their headquarters.  The Turk and I signed up for a tasting hoping to find out more about Sibu and chocolate in Costa Rica.

Cocao pods, chilis, cocao beans

The co-owner of Sibu greeted us when we finally found their location - see previous blog entry of driving around like drunken sailors.  Come to find out, Julio's family was the first Turk family to move to Costa Rica around 1918. At that point, they were actually Ottomans since there was no Turkey, and they were in fact Jewish Ottomans.  He said that now there are a number of Turks living in CR.

Turk finds favorite thing - wood oven

Julio is an historian and worked for National Geographic in central america doing research and lecturing. So he was comfortable being our chocolate lecturer as he described the ancient history of chocolate and how Costa Rica gave up their indigenous foods like cocoa for european foods like coffee because of the influx of europeans and their businesses.

Cocoa bean, Sibu chcolates to taste!

Julio demo'ing ancient chocolate drinking cup

Sibu, named for an ancient god, has a mission to bring back the cocoa origins of Costa Rica through their chocolate. This is mainly through their bonbons where they mix herbs, spices for unique flavors.
The grounds of this artisanal chocolate maker were beautiful and they had a restaurant that made tasty, healthy foods. We shared their soup - smoked pumpkin, green salad and sandwich of handmade sausage and hummus with peppers.  It was delicious, though slightly needing more seasoning as is typical in CR.

Overall, it was an interesting experience, but not worth the $25 each that we paid to hear Julio's history of chocolate and taste five of their chocolates. We were not shown any chocolate being made and it appears that the cocoa beans are processed elsewhere, not on site.  The cocoa plants are grown on the east side of the country where the weather is a bit warmer. We did stumble upon a window overlooking a work area where it appeared that a woman was making chocolates, but the view was somewhat blocked.