Justitia 2008-08-23
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
This is a review I wrote awhile back for Leonidas from another supplier who no longer sells it here on Amazon:
Well, I could not believe I found Leonidas chocolates on [...]. For 4 years btwn 2000-2004 I lived half time in Belgium with native Belgians and half time in the US. SO I got to learn Belgian culture form the inside, not as a tourist. Throughout the north part (the Dutch part) of Belgium, one finds family owned chocolate shops everywhere. There are also the chains. One chain was Leonidas, and it was their chocolates I loved the most. The Belgians did not consider them the elite -- more "rough: and middle-class, Godiva was consider more "elegant." But in truth it was pretty standard when you were invited to someone's home for dinner or whatever, you almost always brought a box of Leonidas chocolates with you to give to the host.
I would make several trips back to the US each year and I was always lugging boxes and boxes of Leonidas chocolates with me. Usually about 20 lobs or more -- to give as gifts to people. People just died for them.
You couldn't get them over here in the US, you could get their competitors. When you get chocolates on Belgium, they do not have preservatives as they have to have to come over here. The chocolates would literally spoil in about 10 days (which meant you had to eat them right away :-) ) But to get them over here in the US, the chocolates had to have preservatives in them SO Godiva in the US tasted no where near as good as Godiva in Europe. Leonidas, at the time, did not export their products. So even though I do not know the particular product here, though I am sure it is great, it also has to have preservatives in it or it would not survive.
But regardless, Leonidas is really the best, even though the Belgians don't want to admit it. (Belgians have an incredible inferiority complex -- people in Europe make jokes about Belgians the way people in the US make slurrish jokes about various immigrant minorities.) Godiva I believe is French... And I am sure that is why the Belgians think it superior to their own product... shame...
