Looking for a sweet little lift?

Many years ago, I was a fashion editor. (I know! How many jobs can a girl have!?) Twice a year I’d go to Paris to see the shows and, glamorous as this sounds, it never was. All the shows ran late and because I was a mere assistant no one cared how I got around, so I’d watch the Condé Nast girls being chauffeured as I sweatily ran from Métro station to Métro station trying to work out which rundown warehouse (this being the 1990s), in which rundown area, the designer had chosen. Sleep was a theory, and we all kept going – those of us who ate at all – on chocolate-covered espresso beans. Mine came from Whittard (I’d bring them with me), and the thought of one can still immediately propel me back to Paris and the sensation of being somewhere very glamorous but feeling extremely lonely and out of place: angst in a mouthful.

Back in those Paris days, the chocolate-covered coffee beans I had were just the usual bean – where twin coffee beans are in one pod (the coffee cherry), so one side is flat where they nestle together. But the ones I tried recently, from Tosier, are peaberry, where the fruit produces just one round bean, like a pea. These are rarer, some say sweeter – and like most rare things, outside of diseases, coveted.

It’s been a long time since I had a packet of chocolate- covered coffee beans, but these were a welcome and complete antidote to the 90s versions. Covered in 70% Ecuadorian chocolate, they’re a perfect little caffeine hit. They’re £20, but a packet lasts ages, and the smell alone is worth it.