The Parisian Chocolatier Reviving a 19th-Century Trading Card Tradition

09.01.2025 - 10:55 / nytimes.com / Marie Antoinette / Napoleon Bonaparte

Namia River Retreat opened last month on the banks of the Thu Bon River in Hoi An, a coastal city in central Vietnam. The tranquil setting — all 60 villas stand between the water and a palm forest — inspires the resort’s wellness program. Activities include yoga, meditation and duong sinh (an Indigenous form of tai chi) sessions and swimming in the saltwater pool; there’s also access to riverside saunas, bamboo bicycles to explore Hoi An and sunset river cruises. An indoor-outdoor spa specializes in traditional Vietnamese medicine using herbs grown on the property and in nearby gardens. The villas themselves are more indulgent than you might expect at a wellness resort. Each comes with a private pool, a sunken bathtub and an outdoor shower, while the décor is replete with local touches, from the ash-wood furniture made in nearby Da Nang to the artisan-carved wooden wall hangings and photographs depicting Vietnamese life. And for food, you can choose between two restaurants: the Fisherman, a seafood spot, and the Merchant, where the playful menu offers cocktails inspired by street food (the Hoi An Chicken Rice Com Ga features a local rum infused with rice and chicken broth) and equally nontraditional dishes like cao lau carbonara, whose sauce is made with duck egg.

The Parisian chocolate company Debauve & Gallais was founded 225 years ago by Sulpice Debauve, a pharmacist to Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette who later became the official chocolate supplier to the kings of France. He introduced the confection as a health remedy to the royal court and, according to the brand, invented the era’s first chocolate one could bite into instead of drink. Those chocolats à croquer flat medallions shaped like old coins — became a signature that remains a Debauve & Gallais best seller today under the name Pistoles de Marie-Antoinette. Along with chocolate bars, truffles, Croquamandes (chocolate-covered almonds created for Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807) and other confections whose recipes have seldom changed, the Pistoles are still displayed like jewels behind the shop’s original semicircle apothecary counter. But when Domitille Jollois joined the company as its president in 2022, she unearthed a cellar full of old packaging, drawings and recipes that inspired an update to the institution. The packaging got a light refresh, while the U.S.-based illustrator Ilya Milstein worked on reviving a long-forgotten Parisian tradition: chromos. A form of advertising in the mid-19th century, these small pictorial cards depicting scenes from daily life or fables were created by the era’s leading illustrators and printed using chromolithography; they were popularized by Le Bon Marché’s founder, Aristide Boucicaut, and released weekly