Valentines & Chocolates Go Together Like Rock & Roll

Chesterfield has its own European-trained chocolatier, near the corner of Clayton and Baxter roads.

St. Louis homey Rick Jordan both makes and sells his chocolate—all natural ingredients—

The majority of the shop appears to be a candy kitchen, the chef's studio, Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory—with glass walls. Customers or browsers can watch the uniformed sweets chefs at work.

The other part of the shop is for eyeing chocolates ready to go, and buying some, perhaps.

The shop is immaculate and spare, minimalist in design. In a word, delightful. In more than one word, it's seamless in design like an Apple Store (purveyor of iPads, iPods, iPhones.)

Open in Chesterfield since August, the "boutique and chocolate laboratory" sells delicious art wholesale as well as retail.

Jordan can be seen at work in his shop's chocolate laboratory. He says he has been making artisan chocolates and sculpture in St. Louis since 2006.

There's a giant chocolate reindeer-like sculpture sitting in the front window, next to two chocolate pine trees. A sculpture like the one near Chesterfield's Central Park—the human form arising from the earth—was spotted in the chocolatier's kitchen, sculpted of what else but chocolate.

Check out this good story about Jordan before he opened the shop