WASHINGTON — With Valentine’s Day only a week away, the chocolate season is upon us. This weekend, chocoholics are descending on the City of Fairfax.
“The smell chocolate overwhelms you,” says Beverly Meyers with the Chocolate Lovers Festival.
She says the festival began in 1993 as a way draw people into the city during the winter.
The entire weekend is dedicated to chocolate. One of the events, the “Taste of Chocolate,” kicked off at 10 a.m. Saturday. The festival continues on Sunday at noon, and runs until 4 p.m.
On Saturday morning, people were standing in a line stretching around the block, waiting for the doors of the city’s Old Town Hall to open. Two floors of the hall are filled with chocolate vendors.
Meyers says this is what happens when you walk in the door: “[You] see every kind of chocolate delicacy that you can think of.”
Doug Worthington and his wife, who are from Annandale, are repeat customers of the “Taste of Chocolate.” He says they have been coming for the past 10 or 12 years, and they were one of first visitors into this temporarily luscious land of chocolate on Saturday.
“It did just open but it’ll be very crowded by about noon and we want to get in before it all runs out,” Worthington explained. “There are special chocolates and confection items that they only make for the Chocolate Lovers Festival.”
One of the other big events this weekend is the “Chocolate Challenge.” Professionals and amateurs compete to see who can create the best chocolate sculptures, as well as cakes and cupcakes. It’s like an edible art gallery.
The challenge is sponsored by George Mason University Department of Nutrition and Food Services.
“We actually have folks who come down from Hershey, Pennsylvania to this event yearly because they say there’s nothing like this in Hersey,” Meyers says.
Meyers is chairman of the Independence Day Committee that sponsors the Chocolate Festival.
