Los Angeles Chocolate Salon 2026

In the past, I've been to three Chocolate Salons; two in San Francisco (where I've also done other things with Dandelion Chocolate), and one in LA, where I live. They've all been pretty big, and I usually haven't had time to get to everything in them, both because of the scale and also because of the public access.

This Salon, I came in expecting more of the same. Unfortunately, neither of those things happened, and instead I walked into what is likely the smallest collection of chocolatiers I've ever seen in one room. I counted 14, which was far, far smaller than any I've ever been to. Chocoa, by far the largest, had probably 200. the Northwest UnConference's festival probably had about 130. The SF Salons had maybe 70 apiece, and the LA one in '24 had maybe 60.

One of them stood out, though. I had a short conversation with a proprietor of one Vene Cacao. They make good chocolate, and the conversation was enlightening. We talked about my ITW project a little bit, and speaking of that, I said I would post about it every other week, but it turns out it's going a lot slower than that because of some curriculum thing I don't know about. I'll do a post next week about it, probably.

The rest of the Salon was pretty mediocre for its size. I had a run-in with a chocolatier previously covered on this blog, Mignon Chocolate. They're owned by a Ukranian family with quite the story, so go check out that post. I picked up a few things here and there, one of those being a very interesting pistachio lemon caramel. It has a very unique taste, not one I'm used to, but I like it all the same. it's very nutty, and the pistachio is very much the dominant flavor. I actually don't get much lemon at all, but when it's there, it's good. It was vended by Truffles 'n Toffee, which I've never heard of before, but they make good pistachio lemon caramel!

All in all, I don't think it was worth it, but it did serve one important purpose I want to highlight.

In the last two years or so, I've noticed that a lot of chocolatiers are dropping out. It's an extremely difficult business, but even so the rate of "mortality" is higher than I would expect. Maybe I'm too inexperienced, or maybe I'm just not seeing something obvious like I tend to in my chess games, but I think it's strange. To me, nothing highlights this trend better than the lack of vendor attendance at this event. It's strange, and I don't quite know what to tack it up to besides the evident inflation of literally everything. Anyways, thanks for reading, and sorry about the ITW thing. I promise I'm working on it.

This is the Vene Cacao vendor I mentioned. I unfortunately cannot recall the proprietor's name, and as soon as I receive a correction I'll insert it. He's a nice man, though, and I wish him and Vene Cacao well.