Gueuze, more wine than beer, is one of those food items that commands you to pay attention at all times. From the moment your nose picks up the bouquet until 2-3 minutes after your last sip, it keeps you engaged. Thanks to a girl I met in a bar in Bruges, my horizons viv a vis Gueuze have been expanded. (She told me that she would never drink the one I was drinking.) So let me tell you what I discovered.

The stuff I like is sweet and sour. This girl liked the natural Gueuze- sour with no added sugar. As I tried to explain to her in Flemish, the joy is in the contrast. When I say sour, I mean a sour the depth and breadth of Europe herself, with peaks and plains, which seem to cry out, at least to my Gueuze-receptors, for at least a tithe of sugar.

Before I continue, let me tell you how not to pronounce Gueuze (Gooze, geuze, etc.) and how to pronounce it (hueu-zueu, with the 'h' similar to trying to dislodge a fish bone from your throat and the 'ueu', like a Dutch guy would say it).

The bottle is corked, not capped like a typical beer, announcing: 'Here is something really special.' How is this wonderful beer made? Try gueuze.com or some such website. My favorite is Gueuze BelleVue, but you can go to the Brugse Beertje bar in Bruges and taste 6 or 7 others.

A gueuze mousse cake? I think not!

Before I discuss chocolates, please permit me a slight digression. Being an American, a food fanatic, and a former resident of Paris, I am crazy about game; and I miss it every day, especially during game season (fall and winter). Imagine my joy- and sorrow- at seeing not one but 3 basketsful of genuine wild pheasants, plucked except for the lovely tail feathers, at a shop in Bruges. I have eaten many pheasants, and they are spectacular when roasted rare. My closest oven was over 3000 miles away, and I almost smuggled some home.

One more digression, concerning the crevettes grises (grey shrimp). They are tiny, from local waters, a bitch to peel, and such a classic when coated with homemade mayonnaise and served in a partially hollowed-out ripe tomato. Why is this dish so good? I'm not sure, but you should also taste eels in cream sauce at Siphon, a famous restaurant in Damme, about 5 miles from Bruges, in the Flemish countryside next to a canal. It's surrounded by farmland and has a kitchen garden which supplies herbs for the restaurant.

I knew the pastry and chocolate shops of Bruges as if Bruges were my home town. But, having been absent for a few years, I had to see if my favorite shops were still good. But lo and behold, my all-time favorite chocolate shop, Verbeke, was gone. I called the last phone number I had (they used to ship their chocolates to me in the U.S.) and reached the owner. Ahh - great, I said, you're still in business but at a new location. No, she said, in her still young voice, we are retired. But how old are you? Fifty-five. Outraged, I asked her why she and her husband had retired so soon. You see, they made something called a hedgehog which tasted like sabayon surrounded by bittersweet chocolate. Your first reaction, as you bit through the shell and the interior squirted all over the inside of your mouth, was: Wow! Your second reaction would then be: How did they do it?

Clearly, the answer was not in the cards- not mine in any case.

So, let's review the classics: almond praline, hazelnut praline, crème fraiche, truffles, and liquor-filled. I tasted them all in Brussels and Bruges, in January 2004 and over the years. What stands out, as the pinnacle of the chocolatier's art, is one of each- one exquisite chocolate, sometimes many years old, a couple from today and yesterday, and a few digitally enhanced by an overactive, perfection-seeking brain. There's one surprise that may lead to a dessert.

I remember being surprised many years ago by a chocolate filled with vanilla-flavored crème fraiche. It was my first, and it was very good. I was going to say that it was like a symphony in my mouth, and then I remembered another that was a combination of crème fraiche and almond praline. That was the symphony! (Returning to the hedgehog, that was the Ninth Symphony.)

Fresh cream and chocolate- you can't help but like it. It doesn't have a great shelf life (thank you, artisans of the world, for even considering to make these subtle perishable wonders) so you have to taste it on the spot.

Praline (prah-lin-ay, as we say it when we want to show off), c'est magnifique- oh, I mean it's magnificent. At a little chocolate shop in Roanne, France, not far from Michelin 3-star Troisgros, where I was gainfully employed for 1 year (no salary but room and food), I assisted a master chocolatier as he combined roasted almonds (you can use hazelnuts too, but almonds are more subtle and so delicious) and caramelized sugar, let it cool, and ran it through a printing press (I think) to pulverize it. That's praline. Then you add a little melted chocolate, prod it into one of many shapes, and dip it into melted chocolate by hand. By the way, use the best ingredients you can find; and make sure the coating is nice and thin. OK- now you can eat one. (Now, I'm not sure where I ate the best one- in Roanne or Bruges.)

For liquor-filled chocolates, use the best Cognac or Kirsch or orange liqueur or even red wine (the last is made by a company in Texas). The shell, made of starch, enclosing the liquor must be thin enough to give way to a gentle closing of the teeth. When the chocolate and liquor mingle, it's like- to continue with symphonic symbolism- Beethoven's Pastoral, or else 'Oh Happy Day'.

Here is the surprise: a walnut praline and crème fraiche candy covered with a thin layer of white chocolate. If I were riding a horse at the moment I ate it, I would have to stop, get off my horse, take off my hat, slap it on my chaps, and say, 'Well, dang it, that was purty darn good.'

A final note- chocolate and cantaloupe, chocolate and chili peppers, chocolate and crystallized ginger, chocolate and cabernet sauvignon- all delicious and maybe worth a dessert.