For centuries, Damascus, one of the western most cities of the Silk Road, was known as the center of confectionery treats in the Middle East. Traditionally, however, these treats, such as ma’amoul and kanafeh, were made of fruits, nuts, honey, and pastry. While Syria has been known for providing the best of these desserts and sweets for generations, the addition of chocolate to these confectioneries is as recent as 1931, when Sadek Ghraoui, after visiting a chocolate factory in Paris, decided to add it to his company’s repertoire of sweets. Thus began the Ghraout Chocolate Factory (website). Since then, even with some of the suspicion with which some residents of the Middle East regard chocolate, its popularity has grown.
Sadek Ghraoui was the 4th generation head of a family of merchants and purveyors of award-winning confections and other foods and comestibles, but the first to introduce chocolate into the mix. While his chocolate sold well in Paris and Belgium, often winning awards, it was hard for Ghraoui to sell it to his customers in Syria, who were mostly unfamiliar with it, even to customers who had been coming to his family for generations.
While chocolate had been brought to the Middle East through the Germans working with the Ottomans, and later through the British and French, it was still seen as a more exotic Western candy. Ghraoui needed a way to tempt his customers to try something new. He began packaging his chocolates in handmade wooden boxes from Austria, including little gifts with each, such as sterling silver scissors or gold letter cutters.
As it increased its chocolate production in Syria, Ghraoui’s factory worked more to bring the two flavors – Western chocolate and Middle Eastern fruits and spices – together. During the 1950s, Ghraoui’s chocolates were in high demand in Europe. Over the years, even during the closing of Syria from the 1960s to 1996, the Ghraoui chocolate factory produced chocolates that pushed the envelope, even if they were only selling locally, and continued to offer chocolates with a uniquely Syrian flair.
When Syria opened up again, Sadek Ghraoui’s son, Bassam, decided to work again for his father’s chocolate dream. Chocolate filled and coated traditional dried sweet fruits, pistachio and almond nut pastes coated in fondant, chocolate coated fruit pastes and jellies, and a perfect balance of sweetness are some of the aims of the Ghraoui Chocolate Factory.
The Ghraoui family is not the only major chocolatier along the ancient, exotic Silk Road. Patchi (website), a Lebanese chain based out of Beirut, is Ghraoui’s major competitor. Like Ghraoui, Patchi lures its customers in part through the unique flavors of the Middle East, such as the Desir, a date stuffed with an almond and coated with dark chocolate, or the Casablanca, milk chocolate filled with gianduja, hazelnut pieces, and orange peel. Pistachio nuts also play a large part in the candies created by Patchi.
Patchi is particularly known for its specialty boxes that range from regular gift boxes to leather boxes to wedding favors other celebratory chocolate gifts wrapped in intricate paper roses, poinsettias, and other flowers. This last Christmas, Patchi introduced a box of chocolate exclusively made for Harrods of London that sold for about £5000 ($7,824). The leather wrapped box was hand-embroidered with silk, filled with 49 hand-wrapped chocolates kept in soft suede, and separated by gold and platinum lining. Each chocolate was further decorated with a gold flower, crystal, or miniature silk rose. A gold plaque inside the box was meant to be hand-engraved for a dedication from the giver to the giftee.
Both Beirut and Damascus are once again becoming the center of exotic sweets, not just in the Middle East, but also for the rest of the world, as companies like Ghraoui and Patchi continue to create chocolate candies with distinctive Middle Eastern flavors and spices.
More information may be found at:
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200806/
http://news-lab.net/blog/2008/11/10/lebanon-offers-the-worlds-most-expensive-chocolate/
