Can one question change your life? I’m willing to bet a twenty-five-piece box of Jean-Paul Hévin bonbons on it.

In the fall of 2008, I was sitting in my office, living what I considered to be a pretty great life. I was single, owned a cute apartment in the East Village, and I was braving New York’s dating scene. I had the best friends in the world and a jam-packed social calendar. I enjoyed my job as an advertising copywriter. But what I really loved were my moonlighting dalliances: exploring bakeries, dessert bars, gelaterias, and chocolate boutiques and documenting my delicious discoveries for my “Sweet Freak” blog and Metro newspaper column, along with other local magazines and newspapers. You could say my life was good: easy, fun, comfortable.

I was enjoying my afternoon bonbon (a piece of 78 percent dark chocolate, hand-delivered by my boss who had brought it back from a business trip to Germany; it had these lovely little bits of cocoa that added a nice semi-crunchy texture to the sharp flavor). I was definitely coasting. My creative directors at Ogilvy & Mather, the agency where I worked, always made sure I wasn’t overloaded. Which was a good thing since my best friend, AJ, and I were often in the habit of lingering over kir royales at Keith McNally’s fabulous Meatpacking District bistro, Pastis, until 2:00 a.m. On that particular autumn day, I was wondering if Rafaa, the Romanian gazillionaire I had met the night before, was going to call when Allyson, the agency’s in-house recruiter, walked into my office.

“What do you think about Paris?” she asked, pausing in the doorway to adjust her Ugg boot. I was surprised to see her. I had been with Ogilvy for two years, so there was rarely a reason for her to come into my office. I put the chocolate aside—already looking forward to getting back to its thin, almost-bitter bite later—and gave her my full attention.

“Why, are you going over for vacation?” I asked, her visit suddenly making sense. A few months prior, I had spent a week in Paris, touring the best chocolatiers on the city’s Vélib’s—three-speed bicycles stationed all over the city that, for just a euro a day, were there for the taking and leaving. It was genius because it not only allowed me to hit up multiple chocolatiers each day, but also kept my annihilation of the bonbons from going straight to my ass. After my return, three colleagues who were planning trips to Paris had asked me for my must-eat-sweets itinerary. I thought Allyson might be a sweet freak too.

“No,” she said, brushing her bangs out of her eyes, still all nonchalant as she took a seat in front of me. “Well, actually, they’re looking for an English-speaking writer in the Paris office.” Pause. Our eyes locked. “I thought of you.” We both started to smile. “On the Louis Vuitton account,” she finished dramatically.

I spun myself around in my Aeron chair and laughed. “What? They’re looking for an English-speaking writer in Paris? To work on Louis Vuitton? And you’re asking me?” That elicited three nods from Allyson, and suddenly my life was changing.

The next few months were a blur of interviews, portfolio reviews, negotiations, and paperwork. They were also an emotional roller coaster. Of course I wanted to go live in Paris and work with one of the best fashion houses in the world. What Louboutin-loving, Coco-worshipping, macaron addict wouldn’t? But what about my cute East Village co-op that my dad, an interior designer, and I had just finished decorating? What about my New York-based freelance network? And my “Sweet Freak” column? What about my circle of friends who, after having graduated from our roaring twenties to our (more or less) refined thirties, were now my modern family? And my crazy black tabby cat, Milo? What about him? Would I have to leave him behind, or could I get a French work visa pour deux?

As I waited forever for an official offer—a little preview of the maddeningly slow pace in Paris—my enthusiasm ebbed and flowed. When I wasn’t mentally plotting shopping sprees in the Haut Marais or sunset picnics in the Jardin du Luxembourg, I was hoping the whole thing would fall apart. That way, I wouldn’t have to make a decision at all and I could stay in New York, not because I was too chicken to leave, but because circumstances beyond my control kept me there. I read the same ambivalence in my friends’ faces. Every time I told a close friend—for, being slightly superstitious, I had been guarding the potential move to Paris from most people in case it fell through—I felt a pang as I watched their face cycle through the emotions: shock, awe, thrill, disbelief, despondence, acceptance, and, finally, enthusiasm.

Although, when I told Rachel Zoe Insler, the chocolatier who had just opened a chocolate boutique in my neighborhood, Bespoke Chocolates, her face immediately shone with envy.

The first time I bit into one of Rachel’s truffles, I was instantly smitten. But the first time I met her, I was charmed. She’s got the smarts and talent of a chocolatier trained in London, but the cool, down-to-earth vibe of someone who can cop to loving Tasti D-Lite frozen dessert. How could someone who produces such exquisite specimens of chocolate be so…ordinary? I wondered. Every time I visited her chocolate shop, tucked in a hidden alley off First Street, she’d be wearing yoga pants and clogs, hair pulled back in a bandana, Jack Johnson playing on iTunes. Shortly after she opened her boutique, we had bonded by sharing our childhood sweets obsessions: hers, Baskin-Robbins bubble gum ice cream, and mine, cream-filled Hostess CupCakes. So ordinary.

Rachel had lived in the East Village for years—the only thing that gave her edge. Or so I thought, until I learned about her European training and tasted her amazing chocolates. “Here,” she said on one of my early visits, handing me a 70 percent Colombian dark chocolate truffle. “Let’s start simple.”

It was impossibly creamy, a real melt-in-your-mouth gem. “Good grief, that’s amazing, Rachel.” She smiled and nodded in agreement. I guess she knew she had a hopeless devotee on her hands. She indulged my insatiability and curiosity by feeding me new flavors on every subsequent visit.

“Oh, that’s a good one,” I responded to the zingy and aromatic Southampton tea truffle, picking up on hints of apricot in the Ceylon tea. “Heaven,” I moaned, gripping the marble countertop where she mixed and tempered her bonbons, after tasting the strawberry balsamic truffle, made with strawberry purée, eight-year-old La Vecchia Dispensa Italian balsamic vinegar, and 66 percent dark chocolate, which was then dusted with freeze-dried strawberry powder.

It wasn’t until I knew for certain that I was trading the East Village for the Right Bank that I sampled Rachel’s masterpiece: her signature pretzel-covered, sea-salted caramel that had crackly, salty pretzel bits coating the 66 percent cocoa shell and creamy caramel center. “Pop the whole thing in your mouth since it’s really liquidy caramel inside,” she instructed. I obliged, her eager guinea pig. Sweet-salty had by then become a really popular combination, practiced by everyone from fellow chocolatier Rhonda Kave, who had a small shop, Roni-Sue, in the Lower East Side’s Essex Street Market, to Pichet Ong, who had once been Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s pastry chef and had gone on to open a succession of bakeries and dessert bars downtown. But Rachel’s salty-sweet, one-two punch was absolutely sublime.

“It’s the caramel,” I gushed. “The texture. It sort of blends both extremes into a big gooey mess of deliciousness that melts on your tongue.” She laughed at my professional explanation. “Do you think they have anything like this in Paris?” I asked, licking flicks of caramel left on my fingertips.

“It’s probably a little too messy for the French.”

“True,” I said, while Rachel kindly pointed to her chin, indicating to me that I had a string of caramel there. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” I continued, dotting my face clean. “It’s going to be hard being so prim and proper all the time.”

She was looking at me, slightly confused. “What are you talking about?”

So I shared my back-and-forth, wait-and-see drama of the past several months, and she started buzzing with excitement. “Oh my god, that’s incredible! You have to promise you’ll sample every last chocolate in Paris,” she said. “No, every last chocolate in France. In Europe!” she laughed. Deal, I told her. Fifteen minutes later I said good-bye, buoyed by her enthusiasm and my box of six assorted bonbons.

When I shared the news with AJ, my best friend of twenty-five years, that I had finally received a formal offer, it was a whole different story. I could barely even look at her.

“Seriously?” she choked, both on my news and on a cupcake crumb.

“I know, can you believe it?” We were sitting on a bench outside Billy’s Bakery, a Magnolia Bakery spin-off (or rip-off, depending whom you asked, seeing as it was started by an ex-employee of the famed West Village bakery and had the same retro vibe and menu going on, right down to the ratio of Nilla Wafers in the giant vats of creamy banana pudding). The advantage of Billy’s was that the Sex and the City tour buses didn’t stop here, so we weren’t confronted with our embarrassing Jersey alter egos. It was also right around the corner from AJ’s Chelsea walk-up. We often treated ourselves to a Sunday sweet, either doing new recon for my “Sweet Freak” column or indulging at one of our old faithfuls: City Bakery or here at Billy’s. It was our time to catch up on the week and recount the previous night’s antics if we had been brave or desperate enough to take on Manhattan’s Saturday night scene.

Every time we were at Billy’s, AJ got the banana cupcake with cream cheese frosting, a house specialty. I usually felt it my duty to try something new—like the Hello Dolly, a graham-cracker-crusted bar, layered with a tooth-achingly sweet mélange of chocolate chips, pecans, butterscotch, and coconut, perhaps a big old slice of German chocolate cake, or just a modest sugar-dusted snickerdoodle. But today—out of alliance or nervousness, I wasn’t sure—I had also ordered a banana cupcake: a wise choice, as it was especially spongy and fresh. I was licking the frosting off my fingertips, watching the stream of yellow cabs zooming down Ninth Avenue, while AJ quietly contemplated my news.

“Wow. No.” She sat gazing down at her empty cupcake wrapper, the nutty cake and creamy frosting long gone. Of course I had told her months ago they were looking for writers in Paris and that I was the lead candidate. She had been privy to the blow-by-blow interviewing, negotiating, contract drafting, and waiting over the past few months. But it had taken so long, I don’t think either of us thought an official offer letter would ever come through and the move would actually happen.

We’d had a nearly identical conversation earlier that year when AJ interviewed for a job in Venice. In fact, our lives had been eerily parallel since we met on the first day of seventh grade, skinny eleven-year-olds in the Connecticut burbs, sitting near each other during gym class roll call. AJ’s family had just moved to town from Iowa. At the time, I didn’t know that her giant blue eyes and impossibly friendly attitude were hallmarks of the Midwest. But it wasn’t long before we were inseparable and I got to learn other key traits of my corn-fed best friend: loyalty, modesty, and a great desire to have fun, even at the cost of being complete dorks.

Although the past two years in New York had been the only time we lived in the same city at the same time since graduating high school, our friendship never skipped a beat. When AJ decided against the job in Italy, I had breathed a sigh of relief. In our midthirties, we were having the time of our lives being single and crazy together in New York City. Brunching and gallery hopping? Dancing all night? Flirting with men? Check, check, and check. She was my soul sister. We were wondertwins. I couldn’t imagine life without her sweet smile, steadfast support, or our shared wardrobe. I know we both felt we dodged a bullet when she took herself out of the running for Venice. But now here I was: preparing to leave New York for Paris.

The last of the burnt-orange leaves had just fallen from the trees, and the city air was clearer and crisper than usual. Every time someone opened the door next to us, the warm baking smells—cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg—deliciously danced by our noses. “That’s so great, Aim,” she said, changing her tone of voice on the spot. As a leadership management coach, training international C-level executives how to be effective communicators, she was always the best at seeing the positive side to a situation and encouraging others with the right words and genuine support. “You should be so proud of yourself!”

“Yeah, well, there’s still a lot of paperwork like the visa application and official stuff like that, so who knows what could still happen? It is a luxury brand, after all,” I rambled on. “People aren’t exactly spending money on logo handbags these days. Without anything signed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the opportunity vanished as suddenly as it appeared.” My lame rationalizing was beginning to take on a guilty undertone. AJ just looked at me, knowing as well as I did that I would soon be leaving.

As tormented as I had been over the months, deliberating between life in two phenomenal cities, I had gradually begun to want nothing more than to escape New York. It still made me sad to think about leaving my friends and family and comfy life. But it was becoming increasingly clear that a change was for the best. I was thirty-six. Most of my friends were already on their second or third kids and buying matching living-room sets, while I was acting like a twenty-five-year-old, trolling bars at which the male-to-female ratio was about one to three on a good night. The economy was tanking, friends were getting laid off, and the refrain that we should be happy just to have jobs was getting old, to say nothing of depressing—especially since I was being given more and more work on every copywriter’s biggest nightmare: health care.

If I stayed in New York, one week would bleed into another. Thirty-six would turn into thirty-seven, and suddenly I would be celebrating my fortieth birthday the same way I celebrated my thirtieth: gathering friends for $15 cocktails at some candlelit bar downtown. Everything was beginning to feel like a threat or a joke, including my once-beloved job. And frankly, I was getting too old to dance all night. I guess the thought of leaving it all behind allowed me to see my life with less-kind eyes. It prompted me to think about my needs in a new way. And I couldn’t help but ask: was I really as happy as I had thought I was?

“I’ll give it a year,” I declared to AJ. “I mean, I can’t not go; it’s like fate or something, right? This opportunity to move to my favorite city in the world—well, besides New York—just walked through my door. I have to try it for at least a year or so.”

“I agree—you’d be crazy to pass it up.” AJ was always so thoughtful and insightful, it forced me to be more so too. “What do you want to get out of your time there?”

“Hmmm, good question.” I paused, letting my reflections from all the months of waiting and planning surface. “It will be great for my portfolio, working on Louis Vuitton, so there’s that. And hopefully I’ll get to write about some of my travels while I’m there. Because I definitely want to travel. I want to go to Portugal and Greece, and the south of France, and if I can sell some articles about it, awesome.”

“Mmm-hmmm, go on.”

“Well, I want to learn French. Maybe take some cooking classes…” I was beginning to get that dreamy feeling that Paris always sparked in me. This is really going to happen, isn’t it? “I want to explore the city’s best sweets and bakeries. And…maybe I’ll even fall in love…”

The smile AJ gave me was simultaneously sad and happy. We were entering a new chapter. “Sounds perfect.”

In the end, everything fell into place. After five long months of waiting (there it was, the escargots’ pace again), the papers were signed and I had a one-way ticket in hand. I shipped eight boxes of clothes and shoes, packed my laptop and a suitcase, and steeled myself for the transatlantic flight with Milo—our first trip together. And then, just like that, I was in Paris.

As on all my previous visits, my senses were jolted awake during my first few hours off the plane. With the limestone architecture and the buzz of scooters, the sound of church bells and the smell of chickens roasting at the boucheries, it was an exercise of total indulgence. Alive. I was in Paris, and I felt alive!

I ditched my suitcase, unleashed a still-drugged Milo in my dingy hotel room, and started sauntering down the hill in South Pigalle—SoPi as the increasingly hip-to-New-York-acronyms Frenchies called it—wondering how long I could hold out for a warm and melty Nutella street crepe, one of my favorite things to eat in Paris. I was happy to have a cool new neighborhood to explore, seeing as Ogilvy had put me up in a not-so-cool hotel next to the Moulin Rouge. Only four o’clock, and already drunk eighteen-year-olds and retired Japanese tourists spilling out of tour buses like camera-wielding samurais made the neighborhood a minefield.

Beyond the main boulevard were an astounding number of XXX bars that finally gave way to indie music shops and cafés, where, despite the damp March air, people sat on terraces, smoking and talking in small groups. From across the street, I was drawn to a maroon awning: A l’Étoile d’Or. Hmmm, I wondered, qu’est-ce que c’est? Guidebook stickers plastered the door—badges of legitimacy displayed at restaurants and boutiques around town—so I knew it must be a popular place. But I didn’t know I was about to encounter a legend.

I stepped through the door into a little shop of wonders. The tile floor looked like it had been there for centuries, glass shelves were jammed with colorful tins, and walnut moldings gave a cozy and inviting feel: it was the perfect old-school candy parlor. Best of all, there was chocolate—chocolate everywhere! In the center of the room stood a display case, jammed with petite trays of bonbons. Next to it was a table of stacked bars—Bernachon tablettes. Come to find out, this is très rare, as hardly anyone outside the Lyonnais bean-to-bar chocolatier, Maurice Bernachon, has the privilege of selling them. There were glass jars flaunting mountains of caramels, suckers, pralined nuts, licorice, and more exquisitely wrapped bars and boxes everywhere I looked. “Bonjour!” a husky voice boomed out of nowhere.

I looked up and saw a woman magically appear from the back room. Oh my.

The name Denise Acabo doesn’t mean much to 99 percent of the world’s population. But that other one percent is fanatical about her. She’s one of the greatest connoisseurs of French chocolate, after all.

It took me a moment to recover, looking at this dame in a tartan plaid skirt and blue vest, with long blonde braids and bifocals and—wait, was that? yes, it was!—the scent of Chanel No. 5. I would later discover Acabo is a cult character in Paris. But that day, she was my secret discovery. For more than her signature look, or even her choco-knowledge, it’s her irresistible charm and infectious enthusiasm that reels people in.

Everyone who walks through the doors of her boutique is treated like the most important person in the world. She grabs you by the arm and gushes about her candies: that they’re the best of the best and that she’s the exclusive carrier in the city. She’ll tell you how the cab drivers come in and clean her out of Le Roux caramels and that Japanese tourists fax her magazine articles in which she’s appeared. She talks a mile a minute and is as much an entertainer and theatrice as a chocolate connoisseur. She could prattle on about pralinés for hours—and she will, if you’re not careful. I looked at my watch when she paused for a breath and was shocked to see that thirty minutes had passed. It’s a shame I could understand only a fraction of what she was saying.

Beyond the language barrier, my head was beginning to spin with all the choices. At the Bernachon table, I stared at all the amazing flavors—espresso, orange, hazelnut, rum raisin—wondering how to choose. But it was simple: I let Denise do it. (And thank goodness. When I unwrapped my pâte d’amande pistache chocolate bar back at the hotel, it was like inhaling vats of molten cocoa in a chocolate factory. Delicious without even taking a bite. Between the richness of the 62 percent cacao and the sweet grittiness of Sicilian pistachio paste, I thought I had ascended to chocolate heaven.)

When it came time to selecting bonbons, Denise was equally strong-willed. After careful consideration, I chose six from the case, but she shot two of them down. “Eh,” she started with a look of disdain. It was an expression I would get used to in Paris. “Non, non,” she wagged her finger and pointed to another tray instead. “Celui-ci? Ça, c’est le mieux.” She wanted to make sure I had the best of the best, so I wound up with a selection from all over the country—Gevrey-Chambertin, Bourges, Lorraine—and from many masters, including Henri Le Roux (salted caramel), Bernard Dufoux (balsamic vinegar truffle), and more from Bernachon (a praline noisette). Even with my impressive haul, there were so many exquisite sweets that I didn’t get, including the famed Breton caramels. She’s a smart woman, giving you reason to come back.

All of this, six hours into my first day. Walking back up SoPi’s hill from A l’Étoile d’Or, this time oblivious to the peepshow bars and pools of tourists, I was glowing from within. I’d have to email Rachel and tell her I was already sampling bonbons. That I’d had my first lesson in Paris—from a fast-talking, kilt-wearing, kooky chocophile. That it looked like my life in Paris was going to be a most delicious learning experience.

More Sweet Spots on the Map

In Paris, you can toss a truffle in any direction and hit a world-class chocolatier. (C’est dangereux!) A l’Étoile d’Or is great, as it pulls in all kinds of French chocolates that are tough to get your hands on, like Bernachon tablettes (bars) from Lyon and Bernard Dufoux bonbons from Burgundy. But some of my favorite city-based chocolatiers include Michel Chaudun, Michel Cluizel, Jacques Genin, and—sigh—Jean-Paul Hévin (in the 7e, 1er, 3e, and 1er, respectively).

New York has nothing on Paris when it comes to chocolatiers. So I was especially bummed when Rachel shuttered Bespoke in May of 2011 (thank God I made a couple runs for her peanut butter honey squares and pretzel-covered sea-salted caramels before she did). Despite that big loss, there are still several other great artisanal chocolate-makers around town, including Rhonda Kave (Roni-Sue’s Chocolates on the Lower East Side), Lynda Stern (Bond Street Chocolates in the East Village), and Kee Ling Tong (Kee’s Chocolates in Soho).