Chocolatier Sève

Praline rouge and bean-to-bar chocolate

Pralines rouges are the Lyon end of this counter, and the Véritable Tarte à la Praline is where they land, the pink-almond sweet the city treats as its own. Chocolatier Sève has been working that tradition since 1991, when Richard Sève took over a pâtisserie that had stood on the same site since 1905 and turned it steadily toward chocolate. The house now works bean to bar: cacao bought at source, roasted in its own Lyon manufacture and finished in the atelier behind the shop. Alongside the pralines, the range covers macarons, entremets and pâtisseries, filled tablets and dark chocolate tablets, confiseries, ice creams and sorbets, biscuits, pièces montées and assembled gift boxes.

A boutique, plus a chocolate museum

The visit is retail rather than restaurant, a counter and polished cases holding chocolate, macarons, pâtisserie, pralines, tablets and the Lyon specialties, boxed up for gifts. Celebration formats sit alongside the everyday ones, from pièces montées and cakes de voyage to boîtes de chocolats and pâtes de fruits, so the shop handles a small afternoon purchase and a large order equally well. The maison also teaches and exhibits. It runs ateliers and MUSCO, a small museum given over to how chocolate is made, which turns a stop for a box of chocolates into something closer to a lesson in cacao, roasting and the route from bean to finished bar.

Start with praline, then move to chocolate

Order the Lyon things first. Pralines rouges or the Véritable Tarte à la Praline tie the visit straight to the city’s sweet tradition, and Pierres des Monts d’Or are the other house specialty worth carrying out. Macarons work in a smaller format, sold loose or in the Écrin de Macarons Sucrés, and the Oursons Guimauve are the softer choice, made in vanilla with milk chocolate or in dark chocolate. Then move to the bars, where the bean-to-bar work shows most clearly: dark chocolate tablets, filled tablets and the Tablette Framboise Croustillante, which sets raspberry against crisp petals. Fruits en massepain and florentins round out the confectionery side, and a boîte de chocolats is the way to carry a cross-section of the house home.