Mexico City: MUCHO Chocolato Museum

When I was in Grenada for the 2nd Annual Grenada Chocolate Festival earlier this year I met a lovely woman, Ana Rita, from Mexico City who ran her own museum of chocolate in Mexico City.

On my recent trip to Mexico City in August we had some time to do our own thing on the last day. One of the others with me on the trip, Anita, and I took a cab to Museo MUCHO-Chocolate.

Mexico City has supposedly got the second highest number of museums in a city in the world with only London having more! We got out of the taxi and entered the museum to an intriguing and very modern design.

Beautiful machines from Germany that are no longer working but beautiful to look at.

Dotted all over are interesting machines used solely for the production of chocolate in their younger days, this one is still used.

This room has metate on the shelves. I was pleased to see them as Ana Rita had two with her in Grenada.

A metate is a stone used traditionally to grind corn for tortillas and they are very, very heavy! I would love to have one but there is no way I could ever get one home!!

There are collections of drinking vessels and specialised pouring vessels as well as

chocolate sculpture!

One little room in the museum had chocolate tiles made and stuck on the walls.

The smell was quite intoxicating when you stepped into the room,

so much so that visitors were often unable to resist and took bites out of the tiles on the wall! This one particular area around the window is constantly being replaced.

As well as making chocolates to put in the exhibits they sell a wide range in the shop downstairs

A beautiful and eye catching collection of tins and moulds hangs on the preparation room.

Staff busy at work creating lovely chocolates to purchase in the shop.

When we were finished our tour we sat downstairs in the café with open courtyard and enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate and a chocolate 'tamale' (corn husks are used to wrap around the ingredients and they are usually steamed), this one was a kind of chocolate cake.

It was lovely seeing Ana Rita on our visit to Mexico City. I want to come back again and spend more time wandering around this lovely museum and shrine to the cacao bean!