Marijn Coertjens

Pralines lead everything at this Ghent counter: a round box, a larger box, and a tasting box built to be worked through slowly. Marijn Coertjens opened in the historic centre in February 2017 as a chocolatier and patissier rather than a bread bakery or a cafe, and boxed chocolate sits at the centre of the retail range.

Boxed pralines and a sculptor's habit

The range runs from signature pralines to refined pastries and chocolate sculpture, with the pralines carrying the brand. House language leans on nuance and detail: delicate flavour combinations, nostalgic pastry ideas given a refined makeover, and a box meant to be eaten as a sequence rather than a handful.

Sculpture is not a sideline. The founder built and ran the chocolate department at a Hong Kong grand hotel for five years, where showpiece work for luxury houses and public figures was part of the job, and that habit of treating chocolate as a material still shows in the finish of what sits in the window. Earlier training ran through Belgian pastry kitchens and internships in Japan.

A shop between the castle and the beguinage

The address does some of the work. The shop sits near Gravensteen castle and the Oud Begijnhof, so it lands on the route most visitors already walk, and it reads as a small luxury confectioner rather than a place to settle in with a coffee. Service is over the counter, and most of what leaves is boxed.

Its outlook is deliberately international. Ambitious pastry and chocolate cooks, including from Michelin-starred kitchens, ask to stage here, and the house says those visiting influences make their way into the finished product. Relais Desserts, the international association of pastry chefs, counts the boutique among its members.

How to buy here

Go in for pralines first. The tasting box is the clearest introduction, the round box the easiest gift, and the large box the one to bring to someone who will not share. Pastry sits alongside them, but the chocolate is what the house is organised around, and the flavour work is where the detail goes.

The credentials behind the counter are specific: Belgian Champion Chocolatier in 2007, a bronze medal at the World Pastry Championship in Lyon in 2011, and five years founding a hotel chocolate programme in Hong Kong before the Ghent shop opened. Gault & Millau lists the boutique under chocolatiers.