Enjoying chocolate in old-time Phoenix


I like chocolate. I was introduced to dark chocolate, the really good kind, a few years ago by the Woman in my Life. Since then I've become kinda fussy about chocolate. Nowadays I usually get Ghirardelli dark chocolate, which is from San Francisco, and you can get at just about any grocery store, or if I'm in downtown Glendale I'll go to Cerreta's. I just got a gift box today from one of my PhDs (Phoenix History Detectives) from Scharffen Berger - which I'd never heard of, and am enjoying it immensely. So naturally I'm thinking about people in old-time Phoenix, and whether they enjoyed chocolate.

Of course they did. I see ads for Ghirardelli chocolate in the paper all of the time. And I know what you're thinking - could they eat it in the summer, before the invention of refrigeration? Yes, it came in powdered form.

The more I learn about old-time Phoenix the more I'm amazed at how civilized it was, even over 100 years ago. Luxury goods were supplied through San Francisco, including fish, oysters, champagne, you name it. And although there wasn't refrigeration, ice was manufactured, so you could get cold beer. Very important!

So if you time-travel back to 1913 Phoenix, don't worry that you'll have to go without your Ghirardelli chocolate, you can have as much as you want. If you go back to 1852, however, you'll have to go to San Francisco.

Image at the top of this post: 1913 ad for Ghirardelli chocolate in the Phoenix newspaper. From the Library of Congress
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