Charles Chocolates Tour

Charles Chocolates, our local artisan chocolatier, has a bricks and mortar (literally!) store and factory in emeryville off of I80. Actually, what part of emeryville isn't near I80? Anyway, we saw on the web site that they offer tours, and being big fans of their caramels and hazelnut confections, we reserved three spaces. The tour itself turned out to be just like the Gene Wilder
psychadelic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory experience we were hoping for, except replace oompa loompas with masked technicians unboxing and hitting large slabs of chocolate with hammers, and replace Gene Wilder with an apathetic "I've done this two hundred times, so don't ask me any goddam questions" former record store clerk. Think Ben Stein, rather than Gene. Oh yeah, and replace the part about actually getting to see tour the factory with sitting around in the glass walled atrium.


It's not all bad though -- you get free chocolate!