Love & Kisses: Chocolate to cover even more of Hershey next month

Sunday, January 29, 2006

By Betsa Marsh, Travel Arts Syndicate

		If you go: Hershey A schedule of Chocolate Covered February events is listed at www.hersheycapitalregion.com or available by calling 1-877-727-8573.

HERSHEY -- With the recent flurry of positive health reports, chocoholism is coming out of the shadows like no other addiction. Suddenly, scarfing chocolate seems as good for us as popping One-A-Days.

Dark chocolate, it seems, joins other flavonoid-rich foods such as apples and red wine in helping the body resist cell changes and repair damage from environmental toxins.

Of course, the American Medical Association urges moderation, but that's hardly the mantra for the city of Hershey. During the town's Chocolate-Covered February, chocoholics will be able to shift between sophisticated chocolate-and-wine tastings and silly parades with dancing, singing candy bars and more, much more.

Consider the Chocolate Dinner Extraordinaire at Hotel Hershey, set for Friday. Diners can start, say, with a Hershey Martini, then move on to an appetizer of butternut risotto and seared shrimp, walnuts and white chocolate gremolata, with the faintest hint of sweetness.

The tart red endive and micro greens will come with chocolate-raspberry vinaigrette and the grilled sea bass with vanilla-scented endive and mocha reduction.

Dessert, of course, will be a chocolate overdose: a sampler of tiramisu, white chocolate cr?me brulee, chocolate hazelnut panna cotta and chocolate ice cream, and chocolate financier, with a chocolate-infused cordial.

There's only one seating for this chocolate orgy, and reservations are essential. Just who dreams up cocoa-dusted onion tartlets and cocoa-braised short ribs? "Our chefs experiment all the time," said Ron Suski, director of food and beverage for Hotel Hershey. "We sit around and taste, say yes or no and tweak here or there."

At the hotel's sister property, the family-oriented Hershey Lodge, executive chef Bill Justus poured some Hershey's Special Dark Syrup into ketchup and created the chocolate ketchup some diners demand for their fries. For February, he takes the entrees as his greatest challenge, to move even beyond his own white chocolate risotto with cocoa-crusted chicken and Reese's soy-marinated pork chops.

Has any chocolate conceit simply not worked? "Well," Mr. Justus acknowledged, "I put too much cocoa in a chocolate chili. It tasted fine, but didn't look very good."

For cooks, Mr. Justus will give chocolate demonstrations each February weekend. Other guests can try chocolate-and-beer pairings. What sounds like a Jeff Foxworthy joke has evolved into a specialty, with some drinkers enjoying malt-center chocolate with their India Pale Ale, caramel chocolate with an Imperial Stout.

Hotel Hershey opts for wine: a Benziger Merlot 2001 with Hershey's Exotic Cake, for instance, or a Banfi Rosa Regal 2004 with Chocolate Raspberry Almond Cake.

For Hershey visitors staying elsewhere in this town of 20,000, Chocolate-Covered February will spill over into Hershey's Chocolate World, the country's most-visited corporate center. Three million people a year pop in to learn something about chocolate processing and nosh free samples.

On February weekends, bakers will show off decorating tips with cakes and brownies. Twice a day, the place will stop for an indoor chocolate parade, as a brass band, dressed in chocolate-drizzled chef whites, and candy-bar characters march around the visitor center, belting out "Sugar Sugar" and "I Want Candy."

Outside, chocolate-topped trolleys will take travelers on a tour of the town as told through Milton Hershey's life. After all, the candy man created the entire village around his plant, still the largest chocolate factory in the world, and a century later, company and community are still intertwined.

When it became clear that Hershey and wife Catherine wouldn't have children, she suggested a school for orphan boys, and they endowed it in 1909.

After Catherine's death in 1915, Hershey, who had the equivalent of a fifth-grade education, quietly signed over all his company stock to a trust for the school; the $60 million gift is now worth more than $7 billion.

Today, the Milton Hershey School educates 1,365 disadvantaged boys and girls from around the country in a residential setting, and it is looking to boost enrollment. Although fewer travelers take the school's free tour than zero in on Chocolate World, it's a good place to get a sense of the man and his mission.

Guides like Harry Heath, Class of 1960, are eager to show you the vast marble rotunda and assembly rooms. "I was the youngest of 12 kids," said the retired banker, "and my father died when I was 3. What was my mother going to do?" She sent her two youngest children, Harry and his brother, to Hershey School. Hershey money took Harry from kindergarten to 12th grade, then paid for his undergraduate education. "I tell people, 'Want to help a kid in school? Eat another Hershey bar.' " It's an exhortation that rumbles in the background of every spot in town.

When I checked into Hotel Hershey, I handed over my credit card and the clerk handed me two Hershey bars. They'll up the ante in February with mugs of hot cocoa.

When I signed in for my Chocolate Fondue Wrap, part of the hotel's Chocolate Spa Sampler for February, there's an overstuffed bowl of Kisses on the counter and a thermos of rich hot chocolate in the quiet room.

None of my fellow addicts would believe it, but after two days, I'm almost chocolated-out. Is there anyplace I can go without a candy connection?

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(Betsa Marsh, author of "The Eccentric Traveler: A World of Curious Adventures," is a Lowell Thomas Award winner from the Society of American Travel Writers.)