Kelley wrote this for Sleeping Hedgehog.
On entering the store at 69 Rue de Bac, the back wall covered in metal chocolate molds drew me in. The next thing I noticed was the gracious smile of the handsome young man who emerged from a door in that wall pulling on a black jacket. Handsome young men and chocolate? Yes, please.
From behind a large glass case of truffles he questioned me as he put a black glove onto his left hand, insisting, as did every French person I met in Paris, that he didn’t speak English, and then proceeding to communicate in that language more than adequately. At my assertion that I definitely wanted the 100% Venezuelan Mousse, his polite smile bloomed into the real thing. I was clearly special!
The Mousse Bar is a wonder in a shop full of wonders. Each version is made with bars from distinct regions and varying percentages of cacao. Chapon 
kindly sells the bars and have printed the recipe on their bag so that you may reproduce it at home, though if you don’t read French, you’ll have to do a bit of translating.
For €5, a generous but not too large portion is served in a paper cone. The price is well worth the effects, not the least of which is taste. There being little extra room in the shop, I slipped around the corner of the building under the shelter of an overhang to indulge. Judging from the mousse-smeared paper cones in the space’s public trashcan, I wasn’t the only one who devoured theirs as soon as possible, and probably with an un-Parisian-like haste.
Here is what the Chapon website has to say about the 100% Venezuelan Mousse:
This mousse reveals an intense aroma of cacao, with flavors of dried fruits and wood. The choice of this origin allows to obtain an excellent aromatic power with a bitterness and an average acidity.
How dry that description is! The mousse actually is fragrant and intense, and it dissolves on the tongue without hesitation, drenching your mouth in full flavored chocolate, dark as an ancient jungle. It’s difficult to control the urge to indulge in flowery metaphor when thinking about it. I’m sorry.
Despite the “100%” in the name, there is just enough sweetness to bring the flavors into a satisfying harmony with the texture; it’s only the bar that is sweetner free, not the mousse recipe itself.
The other unexpected effect I noticed hours later when I told my uncle, one of the group I was trotting around Paris with, how much I loved him . . . again. We generally aren’t a verbally affectionate clan. I should also point out that I eat a heavy dose of dark chocolate nearly every day, and have been known to snack on 100% bars straight. They have never made me effusive. Perhaps Chapon has slipped some “magic” into each batch of mousse along with the eggs, sugar and milk? Whatever it is, I’m for it, and my uncle didn’t seem displeased, either.
If, somehow, mousse isn’t your thing, I recommend their truffles, too. I tried a large assortment, admiring the black clad hand gently ferrying each choice into a — yes, large, please — elegant bag. Might I recommend the Pistache? Or the Dôme fondant au sel?
