Check out Dutch Girl Chocolates (1002 Commercial Drive, East Vancouver, 604-251-3221) for its made-on-the-premises Belgian chocolates in flavors such as pistachio, champagne truffle, Advokaat (a Dutch brandy), and tiramisu. The store also sells cranberry bark, anise cubes, and a traditional Dutch wafer made with syrup. However, owner Alexandra Temple reports that people come especially for her forty varieties of licorice (“I grew up on the stuff,” she says of her childhood near Amsterdam), and a few samples confirm that this is an incredible, overlooked goodie. I came away with a tiny white-paper bag of what can be described, at best, as sugar-covered black pellets and was immediately hooked. Never again will I look at those plastic-wrapped strings that hang on the grocery counter as edible licorice. Here are the bona fide products of the California- and Mediterranean-grown glycyrrhiza (“the sweet root”) at once bitter, sweet, salty, pungent, and intoxicating. Also medicinal. Alexandra says the Dutch consume licorice for every ailment from colds to seasickness.
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