Chocolate is a special treat the world over, however the cocoa trees only grow in a limited geographical range. From that range, West Africa supplies about 70 percent of all the cocoa in the world. São Tomé used to be the top producer of cocoa, and it’s now home to some of the best chocolate in the world.
For centuries, people have been enjoying chocolate, which is made from the dried and fermented cacao seeds, and at one point, two small African islands in the Gulf of Guinea were the cocoa capital of the world. The Portuguese colonies of São Tomé and Príncipe were covered in plantations, known as roças, that produced cocoa and coffee for the world’s largest chocolate makers.
Chocolate. Milk chocolate. White chocolate. Dark chocolate. I’m a sucker for chocolate. So when my friend from high school Alexandra Clark opened up her very own chocolate shop right here in Detroit, I was all about it. In fact, when I had a six hour layover in Detroit on my way to Washington, D.C. for the Blog It Home Top Bloggers Tour in 2014, I had my friend pick me up at the airport and my first taste of America was a bon bon from Alex’s shop, Bon Bon Bon.
And Wednesday, Bon Bon Bon set the world record for the World’s Longest Box of Chocolates, clocking in at 313 feet long. (Detroit’s area code is 313, in case you were wondering why that length.)