Leonidas

With my Groupon Now in hand, I paid Leonidas a visit in the early evening. The place was not that easy to find because it was dark outside. It is actually a street unit in the Vancouver Convention Centre and is located right across the water from the iconic five sails of Canada Place. Upon entering the small and intimate store, we were greeted by quite an array of chocolates displayed near the entrance.

Further in, we came across a variety of gelato. I'm not too sure about getting gelato at a chocolate store, but they didn't look too bad.

Our $5 Groupon included a choice of hot chocolate as well as a traditional Belgian liege waffle. Shown here are two glasses of 72% dark chocolate and one glass of white chocolate. There was also the option of 50% dark chocolate, but none of us went for that. I liked the "L" drawn into the foam on top. Isn't that cute? Personally I enjoyed the 72% more because it had a richer chocolate flavour and wasn't as sweet as the white. But just like at Chocolaterie de la Nouvelle France, the taste was surprisingly sweet for dark chocolate. I had always imagined 72% to be rather bitter, but that was not the case at all with this drink. The white chocolate was enjoyable as well; it tasted like sweetened warm milk with a lighter chocolate flavour and texture.

The liege waffle was very different from the one at Damien's. It was much softer with a very pillowy texture. The taste was a lot more buttery and actually reminded me of those sweet buns sold at Chinese bakeries. The whipped cream on the side was sweetened with quite a bit of sugar, so I didn't have too much of it. But cream lovers with a sweet tooth would surely appreciate it. Each of our waffles came with a small square piece of chocolate. We all got different flavours (milk, orange, nibs), but they were all delicious. The chocolate was very good quality with an incredibly smooth and creamy texture.

I quite liked this cute little store, and service was very friendly. It was a bit slow though, as the place was surprisingly crowded near closing time. Another thing I noticed was that there was no visible menu with prices anywhere in the store. Maybe I was just blind and missed it, but it would be nice to have a list of items and prices.