Unwrapping SF's Rich Chocolate History

Bay Curious

KQED

History, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.9 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2024

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When listener Beth Caissie moved to San Francisco she'd heard of Ghirardelli Chocolate, but she was surprised there were so many other fabulous chocolate shops around. She wondered if the lineage stretches all the way back to the Gold Rush. It does! And because high quality chocolate was produced here, innovative chocolate makers from all over the world have put their own cultural twist on the sweet treat. Additional Reading: From Ghirardelli to Socola: Unwrapping S.F's Chocolate History Why Burlingame Smells Like Chocolate Transcript Sign up for our newsletter Enter our Sierra Nevada Brewing Company monthly trivia contest Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcasts This story was reported by Adhiti Bandlamudi. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Amanda Font, Christopher Beale and Brendan Willard. Additional support from Cesar Saldana, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Jasmine Garnett, Carly Severn, Joshua Ling, Holly Kernan and the whole KQED family.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From K-QED. When you think of food and San Francisco, there are probably a few things that come to mind.
0:09.0	Sour dough bread from Boudine or Acme Bakery, maybe burritos in the mission or dim sum in Chinatown.
0:16.4	And then there's chocolate.
0:19.8	Of course I'd heard of Gerdelli chocolates.
0:22.3	Everybody, you know, that's sort of synonymous with San Francisco.
0:25.6	Beth Casey moved to San Francisco in the middle of 2020.
0:29.0	So I'm a newcomer here and I'm a geologist. I work for the US Geological Survey and when she's not collecting sediment
0:37.2	cores from the Bering Sea something she actually did this past summer she's probably
0:42.3	eating chocolate.
0:43.8	I'm really into chocolate.
0:45.2	I drink a mocha every single morning,
0:47.9	and I feel like there's two kinds of mocha drinkers.
0:51.1	There's people who just like something sweet, and then there's people who really like chocolate, and I'm the chocolate variety.
0:57.0	And she noticed San Francisco has a lot of chocolate makers.
1:02.0	It's like everything from big chocolate makers like
1:04.6	Gerdelli and Gatard and then you know smaller ones like Dandelion. You know there's a
1:10.0	guy who makes truffles in North Beach and there's a chocolate cafe and South Park.
1:15.5	So I was like, oh my gosh, what's happening in San Francisco?
1:18.1	Why are there so many chocolate makers?
1:20.6	And my question really is, like, does it have something to do with the Gold Rush?
1:24.0	This is Bay Curious, the podcast that explores the Bay Area one question at a time.
1:30.0	I'm Olivia Alan Price.
	...

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