Archive | industry

History of Chocolate

April 5, 2017 by Kelsey

About a month ago, a couple members of our education team, Kelsey and Cynthia, were asked to give a lecture on the History of Chocolate to an undergraduate history class at the University of California-Davis. They used the opportunity to create an outline for our newest class at Dandelion Chocolate: An Edible History of Chocolate. Here’s a look into how it went, what they learned, and what you can look forward to in our upcoming class!

When Cynthia and I were asked to give a lecture on the History of Chocolate, we thought, “Easy! we’ll just talk about what we do every day…to a bunch of history students… who probably know more about the history of the Americas than we do… and, wait, did you just say 300 of them? Oh. Well, here comes the crippling stage fright. What did we get ourselves into?”

I remember the lump in my throat as I read the email from Professor Andres Resendez, who has spent his entire academic career studying and writing multiple books all about the early exploration and colonization of Central and South America, imagining what we could possibly tell him (and a lecture hall full of students) about cacao, or about how colonialism introduced chocolate to the global trade system, beginning thousands of years ago. And, history, it’s so…old. How could we know enough to confidently explain it to an expert historian? We know chocolate, we’re neck deep in it every day. But talking about the history of chocolate to a room full of history students felt, well, intimidating.

I peeked over my computer at Cynthia. She too had an apprehensive look on her face after opening the last correspondence with Dr. Resendez. But it only took her all of 30 seconds to perk up and smile, as she always does, with a glow of confidence, “Oh! We’ve got this. I mean why not?” Cynthia has a way of boosting my confidence when it comes to these things, reminding me that in our little chocolate world over here we can sometimes forget just how much we’ve already learned about chocolate and where it comes from. I later told her she reminded me of Miss Frizzle from the Magic School Bus, what with her “Take chances, make mistakes and get messy!” attitude.

So there we had it, a month to pull together the curriculum and make a nerdy, but totally cool and engaging presentation. Happily for us, we’ve been dreaming about developing a full class about the history of chocolate for our customers for awhile now, and this was an excellent opportunity to pull that together. We spent the month compiling and formatting information, listening to podcasts, reading articles, looking at all kinds of books on Amazon. Finally, we had a week to pull together the presentation when Cynthia pulled me aside at our Valencia Street Factory and says, “I realized, I know way more than I thought I did and I’m pretty sure you do too. I’m really excited. We’ve totally got this, Kelsey.”

And that was all I needed to hear to be right there with her. She was right. I think we sometimes forget that no one knows it all. We don’t. Historians don’t. Other chocolate makers (probably) don’t. New discoveries are continually being made by scientists, uncovering new evidence extending what we know about the history of chocolate. And then there are the farmers, traders and makers of chocolate, who are regularly discovering new things about the industry. We’re both adding what we know to both ends of the story, the past and the present. You can be an expert and still not know everything; you can be relatively new to it and still know a lot. And that feels like the magic of chocolate; there is always something new to learn.

As P-day approached, we dove into the deep end. We reviewed the history of the Olmec, the Maya and the Aztec.; how cacao beans were at one point a currency, which would set the stage for the future of its influence over the rest of the world. We read stories of European royalty bestowing gifts of chocolate in marriage, a symbol of international alliances. We dove into stories about how the Quaker influence shows up in the modern day labor dynamics in the Ivory Coast. We noticed patterns, like the way different cultures throughout history had some spiritual or romantic association with chocolate, and many of them recognized some aphrodisiac property in theobromine. We even learned how chocolate was adopted by the masses in the United States through WWII. Cynthia pulled together 60+ slides, dotted with lore of Emperor Montezuma and his drinking obsession, and stories of the secret Monks of Spain and Hershey bars. And I got to make it pretty with silly animations and words. We worked until 10pm the night before, giddy with fun facts (which could have also had to do with the entire Marou bar I ate while working).

We walked into the classroom, took a deep breath, introduced ourselves and proceeded to tell a room full of 20 year olds what we knew. And guess what? We totally killed it.

And even better, you can experience the whole thing in our upcoming Edible History of Chocolate class! The first one will be April 20th, from 7-9pm. Stay tuned for more info on how to sign up and future dates.

Twelve Nights to Remember

December 22, 2016 by Roman Licea

The Bay Area is home to beautiful produce, and our best chefs know it well. To this day, a dessert option at our chapel of cookery, Chez Panisse, is a fruit bowl. The archetype for desserts, the fruit bowl, has made its way into the mass-produced mainstream, and out of season, drowned in corn syrup. But chefs and cooks will stand by Alice Waters’ fruit bowl like sentinels because it’s everything those syrupy bowls aren’t: fresh, local, delicious. It’s our best produce, standing on its own, at the right time of year.

Chef Judy Rogers keeps the focus on the bounty of our Bay in the introduction to her classic, “The Zuni Cafe Cookbook,” where she states, “Méfie-toi du cinéma dans la cuisine.” What she means is: beware of chefs who use unnecessary ingredients, including those that are out of season, and over fussed with in the kitchen in hopes of creating a great show because even at our most accomplished, as cooks and chefs, we can’t surpass the quality of our basic ingredients by using technique.

At our fourth annual 12 Nights of Chocolate, some of the most talented chefs in the Bay Area take their skills into our kitchen and design a night with no rules except two: use our chocolate, and don’t hold back. This year, I felt Judy’s words in my bones when I saw what came out of our kitchen. Sometimes simple and always incredible food, showcasing what nature has to bring us this season, and how it can make chocolate sing.

Concluding our fourth annual “12 Nights of Chocolate,” we were taken to some of the most accomplished and exclusive cooking styles in the Bay Area. There was Chef Matthew Siciliano from the brand new SingleThread Farms—an inn, farm, and restaurant in Healdsburg. Near our Valencia location is the Michelin two-starred Lazy Bear, where Chef Edward Martinez creates delicate and artful desserts. And then there’s Ramon Perez, a chef that has dedicated his career to chocolate work and produces beautifully executed truffles and bars in Sacramento, who returned for another year of his tasty creations.

As a member of the pastry team, I was lucky enough to attend most of the twelve nights either as a guest, a server, in the back polishing glassware, or even helping plate with the city’s greatest chefs. The most difficult part of an all-dessert tasting menu is the sugar overload, and the guilt from a lifetime of knowing desserts for dinner isn’t the decision of an adult… but these three chefs appeased any objections we might’ve had from our mothers with flavors and textures that were seasonal, playful, and a healthy balance of technique and simplicity.

Chef Martinez started the night with a delicate brown rice cracker punctuated with drops of burnt citrus gel and cocoa nib custard. Adding to the texture of the cracker was puffed brown rice finished with petals of sunflower to add a gentle pop of color. In true Lazy Bear fashion, Chef Martinez and his cooks can be seen hunched over with laser focus, assembling each dish with surgical precision. The earthy, crisp, and tart bite was a successful beginning to the night.

Our Madagascar chocolate is one of our most distinctive flavor profiles. It’s bold, with cherry and citrus notes, and a thick viscosity that keeps our tempering skills sharp. Chef Ramon Perez took this chocolate and lightened its boldness into a mousse while still retaining the tasting notes that make it so special. Sitting atop a sable-like base, the mousse round had a strip of candied pink lemon to coax out the notes of our chocolate while showcasing a beautiful but unconventional citrus that can found along some of the great stalls at the Ferry Building’s farmer’s markets. Shrouding the dessert were shingles and shards of eucalyptus meringue, over a refreshing lemon granita. The fluff of mousse, sandy sable, chewy lemon peel, crunchy meringue, and cool granita was symphonic, and the dessert unraveled its bold nuances into one of the most thoughtful and memorable experiences our Madagascar chocolate has seen.

By this point in the night, I was already impressed, and in no way prepared for the ending by Chef Matt Siciliano. His final dish was a showstopper that deserved a backing track of strings on an episode of “Chef’s Table.”

A bowl was presented with a green apple, and a simple crumble below that might look like a forgotten centerpiece on any of our kitchen islands, but on a closer look, I realized that this was our chocolate, tempered into an apple mold and dusted with green to look like a Gravenstein. I struck down on the apple with my fork and it shattered open to reveal a dream. Inside was Gravenstein apple butter, layered with a fine brunoise of Pink Pearl apple that offered a rosy color contrast. It was phenomenally impressive, the kind of thing that I could see a temperamental, perfectionist chef sweating and shouting over in the kitchen. But Chef Matt Siciliano is kind and soft-spoken, as sweet as the chestnut cream he coaxed inside that apple.

It’s amazing to see how seasonal flavors can make our chocolate dance; apples, citrus, chestnut. It’s an experience of flavor I’ll never forget. With all proceeds from the nights going to the SF – Marin food bank, I can’t wait for next year when new and recurring chefs take the seasons and our chocolate to create a memorable evening for a great cause.

A Taste of Belize

December 1, 2016 by Madeline Weeks

Madeline Weeks is a PhD student at UC Davis studying the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of fine flavor cacao and chocolate. Before starting her PhD studies, she spent two months living in Belize and Guatemala interviewing cacao farmers who sell to Maya Mountain Cacao and Cacao Verapaz. Her time volunteering with these two organizations has given her a deeper appreciation for the unique flavors of each country. Below, she tells us about her recent research into the word “terroir.” At Dandelion, we use “terroir” in the same way that the wine industry does, to refer to way the environment around a tree impacts the beans. We don’t generally consider genetics or post-harvest process a part of terroir, but vocabulary is a hot button issue in an industry as new as craft chocolate, and things are always changing. Here, Madeline makes the case that “terroir” in the cacao world could encompass more than it traditionally has.

Cracking open pods in Belize.

Many people think of chocolate as one flavor, just “chocolate.” I did too, until I tasted single origin chocolate for the first time.

After tasting chocolate from different origins, I began to wonder: “Why does chocolate from Belize taste drastically different than chocolate from Guatemala, and how can cocoa beans from the same region taste so different from each other, year to year?” I’d been tasting a lot of chocolate at the Dandelion Chocolate factory, and I like it so much that I started coming in on Saturdays to help the production team sort beans in the bean room. This summer, I travelled down to those same countries to learn more about cacao cultivation and post-harvest processes. In the wine, cheese, and chocolate industry, we talk about “terroir” as the way land and weather influence the taste of something. What I discovered in Belize is that on top of these elements surrounding flavor, there is a web of social and cultural dimensions that may contribute to its nuances. To think about flavor this way is to expand the definition of “terroir” beyond soil, and after my time in Belize, I think it’s a new definition worth considering.

In Belize, my first taste of cacao was the “baba” at the Cacao House, where Maya Mountain Cacao Ltd. (MMC) ferments and dries the cacao. Baba is a thin layer of sticky white pulp that covers the raw beans and aids in flavor development during fermentation. It is incredibly tangy and sweet, like a fusion of flavors from tropical fruits like mango, cherimoya, and lychee. Eating that baba made me feel happy, and so did tasting Belizean cacao in its native environment. I was standing on the soil on which the cacao trees had been grown, I could smell the slightly sweet and slightly sour smell of fermentation, and see the beautiful piles of cacao being dried under the sun.

A cracked open pod revealing the mucilaginous pulp, also called “baba.”

Then I bit into the pulp-covered bean. Beneath the sweetness was an astringency that made me wrinkle my face. The beans did not have the characteristic deep “chocolate” notes that one might expect. I later learned this is because their flavor still needed to develop, and that happens during the post-harvest phases of fermentation, drying, and roasting. Curious to taste how the flavor first begins to develop on the farm, I spent the next couple weeks interviewing and living with ten cacao families that sell to MMC.

It was customary to begin each homestay by sharing a meal with the family. Quite literally, we would eat farm-to-table. A typical meal might consist of jippii-jappa (heart of palm) and wild herbs sautéed with chili pepper flakes, black beans slow-cooked over a wooden stove, and piping hot tortillas made from corn that was freshly ground over stone. All of these foods had been harvested from the farm and transformed into sustenance through a process bordering on alchemy.

: A typical meal of corn tortillas, jippii-jappa, and beans.

: Making tortillas during my homestay with Victor Cho’s family.

Like a chef in the kitchen, each farmer has a different style for cultivating the fruits of his or her labor. Their harvest instruments? Simple to the untrained eye – a machete and a burlap sack. Yet the sharpness of the machete only counts for so much without true knowledge of the craft. One of my homestay hosts, Victor Cho, explained to me that finding the right machete for a person was like matching the right wand to a wizard. The size, weight, and curve must be right for the one who swings it. When we talked, he was still waiting until his adopted son was old enough to teach him how to use the machete on the cacao farm. He also taught me that proper harvesting requires full incorporation of the senses: look, touch, smell, and sometimes even taste to ensure that the pods are ripe. He showed me that unripe pods are like plastic fruits that don’t deliver the full spectrum of flavor, and it reminded me of how my mother had also taught me to smell the ripeness of fruit by incorporating my senses, walking me through the farmers’ market and asking questions about where the food comes from. The passing of knowledge from one generation to the next primes the future generation with a natural sense of quality.

A walk through the cacao farm with Victor Cho.

Either on the farm or back at the house, the harvested pods are cracked open to remove the wet beans covered in baba. These beans are stored in buckets covered with banana leaves to sell to MMC or saved for home consumption. One experience I will never forget is tasting the freshly cut baba with Daniel Coc’s children. Daniel is one of the buyers for MMC and recently started growing cacao alongside the corn on his farm. After three years of waiting, his family had proudly harvested their first pod and were ready to crack it open. As we tasted this cacao together, I was filled with appreciation that they had invited me to share this special moment. Learning to taste began with learning to savor.

: Tasting the delicious sweet baba straight from the pod.

: The first ever harvested cacao pod from Daniel’s farm.

During another homestay, I was treated to a highly traditional way of consuming cacao. Some households keep a portion of their harvest for home consumption by storing these beans in buckets for a few days before rinsing off the baba and leaving the beans to dry on a sun patio. The cacao used for home consumption is often “washed,” as is traditional here, rather than being fully fermented and prepared for export. Francisco Cho had just prepared a spicy cacao drink made with black pepper and invited me to join in savoring a cup with his family. This delicious drink was my first time tasting cacao in traditionally prepared form in Belize and I felt honored to take part in its deeper symbolic meaning. Cacao has been integral to Maya traditions in Central America for thousands of years and to this day is still an energetic drink that invigorates the spirit and brings community together. For me, it was a gesture of welcome on this unfamiliar soil.

A mug of hot chocolate prepared Belizean style with black pepper.

The beans that are sold to MMC go through a different postharvest process than that used for home consumption. Each week the buying team visits the households of hundreds of farming families, one by one, to purchase pounds of freshly harvested, wet cacao. The proceeding postharvest steps bring us back to the Cacao House, where the wet beans are fermented, dried, sorted, and eventually shipped in large containers to chocolate makers like Dandelion. It takes more than a full day of work and three people to make their purchasing rounds, in part because of the distance between communities, and in part because of the poor condition of some roads. These visits are also an important time to build relationships. I was impressed by how Daniel Coc would patiently sit down with each of the families to check in about everything, from squirrels on the farm to the health of the family. Since the buying team is usually the first-point of contact to the farmers, their ability to relate to the communities is a key ingredient in keeping everyone committed to quality.

Selling wet beans to Deon Chavarria, the Buying Director of MMC. He weighs the wet beans, pays the farmers, and loads the beans into trucks to bring to the Cacao House. The banana leaf covering the wet beans helps prevent oxidization.

After spending this time getting to know the families in their home environments, I thought back to my original question: What was it that gives chocolate from Belize its unique flavor? Within the Geography Group at UC Davis, we’ve been looking at this from the perspective of terroir and are working on a forthcoming paper. In the chocolate world, “terroir” can mean a number of things depending on who uses it, from biophysical traits like cacao variety or genetics, and harvest year to cultural dimensions like fermentation and cultivation practices. I personally am finding that there is no single definition, similar to what Kristy Leissle had uncovered about the word “artisan.” In trying to get to the root of terroir, as a means of understanding what makes chocolate taste the way it does, I’ve reflected on what terroir means to me personally.

I see terroir as a web of interconnectedness. Within this web are communities of people, plants, and organisms. Terroir begins in the soil, where a healthy microbiome is essential for nourishing the roots that grow into the food we eat and contributing to the flavor in beans we turn to into chocolate. But terroir is more than just flavor, it is also about the people’s connection to the land and to each other. Terroir tells a story about people and place. As my research journey progresses, my understanding of its complexity will continue to evolve. What I can say, is that the unique flavor of cacao from Belize is a product of terroir in all its dimensions—and that cacao has a miraculous way of bringing people together.

Acknowledgements: This journey would not have been possible without support from many people. I am grateful for the initial planning conversations with Cynthia, Greg, and Molly from Dandelion, Maya and Emily from Uncommon Cacao, and for the in-country field support from the Maya Mountain Cacao Team: Minni, Deon, Daniel, and the ten cacao families from whom I learned tremendously about the taste of cacao in Belize.

You can follow Madeline’s PhD journey and exploration of flavor on Twitter and Instagram: @madelinecacao.

The Postharvest Life of a Cocoa Bean in Cahabón

October 24, 2016 by Kelsey

Drying Cacao Beans from Adioesmac

The final flavor of a cocoa bean depends on a lot of things, including how we roast and refine them in the factory, but beans taste the way they do largely because of how they’re handled just after harvest. Sadly, the steps of post-harvest processing, fermentation, drying, and roasting, happen thousands of miles away from where the chocolate is being made, which means we don’t get to see them every day. As much as we would love to pick up our Valencia street factory and move it to the tropics so we could be a part of the day in and day out of fermentation and drying, I don’t think that is going to happen anytime soon… although don’t quote me on that.

And so, we learn everything we can through producers, and through our Chocolate Sourcerer Greg, who visits them often. Sometimes we’ll even travel with him and take a shot at shoveling fermenting beans ourselves. The craft chocolate industry is generations behind the coffee and wine industries—which are both similar to chocolate in many regards—but that means we’re still in our infancy phase, waddling around and learning our primary functions. There is still so much for us to learn about chocolate on this side of the supply chain, and because every partner at origin we work does things differently depending on the geography, weather, and politics in their region, collecting as much information as possible is critical to doing things better all around.

One partner we work with who is addressing the growing pains of the industry is Cacao Verapaz (CV) located in Cobán, Guatemala. They’re the ones responsible for getting us those unique and tasty beans in our Cahabón bar.

Started in 2014, Cacao Verapaz is a cacao buyer and exporter that invests in the technical, logistical, quality and market support for farmers from different micro-regions of Alta Verapaz in Guatemala. They work with the small and diverse farming communities tucked away along the steep mountains and lush riversides of northern Guatemala. I was fortunate enough to be sent down there for a few months to live in these primarily Mayan communities to create a transparency report for one of our partners.

Within the Cahabón region, Dandelion buys beans from a community of just over 35 families who all share a fermentation and drying space up the side of a mountain, called Adioesmac. To get there, I hitchhiked up the main switchback road, hanging off the side of a pickup truck which was crammed full of people, chickens and crops, to get sort of close to it. After receiving a very typical rural community-like list of directions along the lines of “go to the corner of the road where the big rock is to the left of the Tigo sign and Pedro will meet you,” I somehow jumped off the truck at the right time and was picked up by the incredibly welcoming Pedro Tiul on his motorcycle who brought me down the rest of the semi-constructed road to the Adioesmac community. Needless to say, I neglected to tell my mother those details about my little adventure until after I returned safely to my apartment in Cobán.

: I’m restricted by my inability to zoom in further on Google to highlight the exact location, but this is the gorgeous view from Pedro’s home.

: Chillin on my bed (hammock) at Pedro’s house with the house pet (giant Turkey).

Historically, cacao-growing regions focus on increasing production over improving quality because there was no market for high quality cacao. As the demand for high quality cacao (meaning good flavor with few defects, such as mold or insects) from chocolate makers increases, there is direct incentive for farmers to continue increasing the quality of their production, partly because because higher quality fetches a better price. Cacao Verapaz positions themselves as resource to support farmers in increasing the quality of their cacao. CV has developed a tiered pricing system, offering more for A quality beans and a little less for B quality. But with the youthfulness of the industry, CV is simultaneously learning about what that means for each community through diligent feedback and data tracking. To describe all that CV does would fill a book, so I’m going to oversimplify some of the process in service of covering a broader slice of their work.

Field Support

Cacao Verapaz’s third employee, Roy Fraatz, is the technical assistant whose job is to spend most of his time in the field at the the 15 different associations that CV buys from. He teaches producers about best practices in the post-harvest process, and acts as a liaison between farmers and buyers. His role came about due to the demand for increased quality and reliability in cacao.

Quality Lab

The investment in their brand-spanking-new quality lab is a really exciting thing for the crew at Cacao Verapaz, chocolate makers like us, and producers. The lab looks not unlike our own R&D lab here at the Valencia Street factory, which makes our quality and flavor team drool (in a totally food safe way) a little.

: Entrance to CV’s quality lab

: Physical evaluation and cut test station

: Roaster and de-husking space

: Molds to create lot taste tests

: Mini-melanger used to make cacao liquor and paste

: Organoleptic (sensory) development characteristics station

Ultimately, the space is going to be used to develop better quality control systems for lot-by-lot tracking and data analysis. Among the many social and market based statistics they are gathering, the lab allows them to generate a better understanding of the cacao they’re buying and create quality standards for fermentation and drying to set their beans apart. A quality report is created for each lot that enters the lab, which is given to the farmers for feedback. Going forward, they hope to use this information to develop flavor profiles for each micro-region to be shared with chocolate makers.

“Our goal is to give feedback on the quality of cocoa to our suppliers and know the characteristics of taste and quality of our different suppliers.”

Marlon Ac, Director, Cacao Verapaz

Fermentation

Fermentation check cut test

We’ve seen fermentation done in so many different ways, many of which come about through trial and error. For example, the community of Adioesmac received beautiful and structurally sound fermentation boxes as a donation from John Scharffenberger years ago, and as part of Cacao Verapaz’s system for quality development, measurements like temperature, internal and external mold percentage, fermentation rates, moisture and seed indexes are all collected for each lot.

Tiered fermentation boxes from Scharffenberger

Fermentation temperature check

Once Cacao Verapaz began working with the community and testing fermentation statistics, they quickly realized that the boxes were way too tall to evenly rotate the cacao and some of the beans were getting too hot and unevenly fermented. Instead, the community reverted to two smaller boxes in the corner of the fermentation space. Now the larger boxes sit empty and serve as a reminder of their growth — or possibly a funky art piece.

Drying

More traditional style of drying – note the impending storm!

Stopping fermentation at just the right time, with just the right amount of acetic acid so that beans aren’t too bitter or astringent is, in a way, a lot harder than it seems. This is where we find another opportunity to develop better systems, and once again it happens through trial and error.

Traditionally, farmers in these communities had dried directly on the dirt backing their homes. Not only did this mean a prominent amount of rocks and critters were able to easily get mixed in, but there was a significant impact from human and animal contact that could disrupt the the drying process. The cacao was also extremely vulnerable to weather as it was constantly exposed to the geography of the tropics.

In order to address the inconsistencies of quality found in each family drying their own small lots, the community pooled together to dry communally on a concrete bed, reducing the amount of rocks, other crops and overall damage. The cacao here was still vulnerable to animals as well as exposed to weather which could cause the beans to mold. In response to this, Cacao Verapaz financed a raised and protected drying space.

The angled roof creates a slight greenhouse effect to promote quick drying, with plastic on the side that protects beans from weather and animals, and can be moved to allow for more consistent airflow. It’s also raised to guard against ground animals and curious children. And hey, it’s ergonomic!

Pedro Tiul working in the new drying space, while his son watches him from old, concrete beds.

Education

Farmers from the small community, Asochivite, visit the privately owned larger farm, Finca Los Planes.

Cacao Verapaz, as of this year, works with nine tiny communities and four larger, privately owned farms. Taking advantage of this relationship, CV coordinates regular “field trips,” if you will, with representatives from the small communities to visit larger ones for a more hands on approach to learning about best practices.

Cacao Verapaz also opens the door for farmers to learn from chocolate makers, and for chocolate makers to learn from farmers, by coordinating association visits.

Our Chocolate Sourcerer, Greg, discussing fermentation, drying and quality at Adioesmac.

One of the most frequent conversations I had with farmers went along the lines of “Hold on, what exactly do you do? What happens after you get the beans? I know how we use chocolate in a drinking form, but *while holding up a Dandelion chocolate bar* how does it get like this? How much does it cost? Why is it so expensive?”

Women of Adioesmac trying Dandelion chocolate made with their cacao.

For some farmers, the first time learning about what happens to their cacao, often their primary source of income, comes from a broken translation between English to Spanish to Quechi. That would be like me making chocolate all day (which I do) and having someone explain to me, twice translated, how it gets to a customer’s hand. As chocolate makers, we’re fortunate we don’t really have that gap. So, in my absolutely non-expert opinion, creating the space for inclusivity within the industry, between farmers and chocolate makers who may not be able to talk every day, seems to deepen the motivation for us all to create high quality relationships and high quality products, especially when we get the chance to learn together.

The experimentation and meticulous data collection Cacao Verapaz is doing is part of our industry’s effort to improve the quality of cacao, and our ability to communicate about what’s working. Ultimately, the more information there is available, the better able we’ll all be to make the best chocolate we can. That’s a win-win for everyone, including you!

What Does the Word “Artisan” Mean?

October 5, 2016 by Kristy Leissle

Kristy Leissle, PhD, known to many as Dr. Chocolate, is faculty in Global Studies and African Studies at the University of Washington Bothell. She researches and writes about the global cocoa-chocolate industry, especially West African agriculture and contemporary craft makers in the US and beyond. We’re big fans of Dr. Leissle, and thrilled to feature her voice on our blog. Below, she looks at the origin, power, and uses of the word “artisan,” and asks: What does it really mean?

Chocolate and the Industrial Revolution – (c) BNPS.co.uk – courtesy of Bill Fredericks

In the US today, our relationship with food is changing. More than half a century ago, when our country witnessed the rise of industrial agriculture and its chemical-propelled grain monocultures, our diets responded. Seeking food security after World War II, the US strove to grow more for less money, leaving anyone who eats food in the 21st century with a bevy of questions that were lost in the drive to make food cheap:

Who created this food? What were their priorities? Where are they and when did they harvest or process the food? How and why did they do that?

Around the same time that these questions began to get more public attention, I noticed the word “artisan” appearing more frequently: most often on food packaging, but also in newspaper and magazine articles about food – especially food that was locally grown or made, and sold by someone who had been part of that process. Loaves of bread were artisanal, as were cheeses, pickles, jars of jam, sauerkraut, and cuts of meat. “Artisan” was everywhere, attempting to communicate…something. What I didn’t understand was exactly what it was trying to say. My interest in finding out led to a three-year research inquiry about the meaning of “artisan” for chocolate. This post is among the first publications of my findings.

I focused my methods on language, and made the most comprehensive list I could of all the new, non-global, bean-to-bar chocolate makers who were founded since 1997 (when Scharffen Berger opened) and selling commercially in the US. As of August 2015, I had identified 129. I searched their websites and bar packaging (exhaustively) for the word “artisan.” Nearly half – 48.8% – used it. At the 2014 NW Chocolate Festival in Seattle, I surveyed approximately 100 attendees for their understandings of “artisan.” Finally, I compared those findings to the historical meaning of “artisan.”

Historically, the definition of an “artisan” was specific, and concrete. Before the Industrial Revolution, “artisans” were a defined socio-economic group in Europe comprised of people who had reached a certain level of skill. To become an artisan, a person – almost always, a man – first had to be admitted to apprenticeship, either with a family member or acquaintance, or in a guild. Even then, the apprenticeship was long, and entry to “artisan” rank was tightly guarded. The apprentice worked towards mastering a craft: the ability to replicate a product precisely and reliably. Only when the trade master was satisfied with the apprentice’s skill level would he be awarded the title of “artisan.” The level of skill and quality required of artisans meant that consumers knew they could trust what those artisans made—including shoes from cobblers, wares from a blacksmith, and more. For the most part, “artisans” made things that people could not make for themselves, like horseshoes and work boots. For the many pre-Industrial peasants who grew and processed their own food, there was hardly such a thing as artisanal food.

As you can probably guess, the historical definition of “artisan” doesn’t exactly correspond to our contemporary ideas about what the word means (consider: artisanal yogurt, French fries, shampoo). The old, concrete definition contrasted with my research findings, which were wholly inconsistent. It seemed that chocolate makers who used “artisan” on their packaging were trying to communicate a variety of things.

Some used the word to convey a sense of history, others to indicate process (such as hand-wrapping bars), but mostly they suggested a host of different meanings, none of which pointed to a common “definition” within the industry. In these cases, “artisan” signified a range of things: for example, that the company was family-run, used local ingredients, or made chocolate that tasted delicious. My findings confirmed the hunch I’d started with: “artisan” had become a “floating signifier” in the world of chocolate marketing, which is to say that it had no stable referent in the real word. Compared to, say, “bread,” which consistently refers to a baked, edible, grain-based loaf, “artisan” didn’t refer to anything fixed. Chocolate makers used it loosely, in whatever way fit their story.

The consumers I surveyed had more consistent ideas about what an “artisan” is and does. Most of them defined “artisan” as someone who understands chocolate’s flavor and texture, and only a few linked “artisan” to a level of training or skill. Most of them associated the word with quality in a way that pitted “artisan” against “industrial” chocolate. Despite what seemed to be a pattern, even consumers were not totally consistent: when a question included an option to define “artisan” as a handmade process, respondents chose that, over any reference to flavor. Overall, it seemed there was hardly any agreement to be found, especially between chocolate makers and shoppers, about what the word meant.

At first, I interpreted that loss of meaning in a negative way. Chocolate makers weren’t answering important questions, or really saying much, by calling themselves “artisan,” and something about that felt disappointing. I thought it would have been more powerful to find that makers were using “artisan” to refer to something defined and distinct: maybe the company had only a few workers, or maybe their craftspeople had mastered every step of the chocolate-making process. It seemed to me that “artisan” needed a fixed meaning to have any power, in marketing or otherwise. If all or even most chocolate makers had offered a consistent definition, consumers would have specific, verifiable information about the product they were buying. But these days, “artisan” could mean anything, which is to say it means nothing at all. In my mind, the loss of meaning was a loss of power.

Photo courtesy of National Geographic and Confiserie Sprüngli Ag

But then, I realized that it wasn’t. Though chocolate makers offered different ideas about the word’s meaning, nearly all companies that used “artisan” to describe their chocolate did something equally as important: they told their story. On websites, at festivals, even on packaging, “artisan” chocolate makers shared many stories, about themselves, their processes, and their motivations. Regardless of its content, the fact of sharing this background or context seemed to add an indefinable value to the chocolate. Instead of offering a fixed meaning, “artisan” seemed to be a way of saying, “At this chocolate company, we can answer your questions about this food.” By using the word, “artisan” chocolate makers were making it clear that they were real people who cared about the food they made and could talk knowledgeably about it. If consumers wanted to know more about the chocolate they were buying, the “artisan” was there to share their expertise. In doing so, “artisans” set themselves implicitly against an anonymous factory of machines that churned out anonymous chocolate bars that told only the fictional story of a brand. This is, I believe, the same suggestion that consumers were making when they responded with “industrial” as the opposite of “artisan” chocolate. Instead of the historically fixed and universal meaning of “artisan” as someone who had achieved a master skill level, “artisan” now confirmed that real-life individuals were behind each chocolate bar. Factory machines did not dominate the process, people did.

One maker may use “artisan” because she prioritizes bringing out a certain, delicate favorite flavor profile with each batch, another because he is constantly experimenting with new inclusions, creatively pushing the “known” boundaries of chocolate’s flavor and texture. Some use it to express motivations. The word “artisan” applies to both those who make chocolate because it fulfills a need to work with their hands, and to those who want to work side by side with loved ones.

I discovered that a word with variable, unstable meaning can have more power than if it had a fixed meaning, because the people who use that word can wield it in different ways. In the case of “artisan,” consumers don’t seem to need a fixed meaning; the general feeling that it conveys, of real-life individuals making chocolate bars, seems to be enough to create trust.

That different stories converge upon the word is certainly a break from its historical definition, but that variability seems to work in the makers’ favor. Today’s new chocolate represents a shift away from the predominance of abundant, cheap food in the 1950s, and the word “artisan” communicates something of that shift to consumers. I think it tells us that the maker desires a more meaningful relationship with their craft than industrial monoculture and huge factories allow. By purchasing “artisan” chocolate, consumers are indicating that they too support an ethos of knowing one’s food, regardless of what particular meaning the maker evokes in his or her story.

Though chocolate makers and chocolate shoppers may not always agree on what “artisan” means, it nevertheless represents an agreement – a signal between them – that they are both reaching for meaningful food. And that is indeed a promising new beginning for the word.

Further results of my findings are forthcoming in the journal Food, Culture and Society.

Tasting Everyday

May 23, 2016 by Alex Voynow

To all my future acquaintances, bus seat neighbors, Tinder matches, and curious onlookers, the answer is “Yes.” No, seriously. It’s true. As a chocolate maker, it’s my job to eat a lot of chocolate every day. I have to. I understand how this looks; from a distance, my job probably seems like an alternate universe where dreams come true, everything is glamorous, and nothing is sad. And sometimes, it really seems that way to me when I talk about it. That said, I want to tell you about the harsh reality of this life.

As I’m writing this, one of my colleagues approaches me with a freshly-tempered bar—broken into individual pieces—expecting that I take and eat one. This is a twice-daily ritual: before the beginning of every tempering round, each member of the production team tastes a square of chocolate from the batch about to be tempered. The idea is to taste the chocolate, and provide a score on a scale from 1 to 10. The number corresponds to our subjective preference for the chocolate, but we also consider its fidelity to the objective flavor—determined by the roast profile we’ve chosen—of whichever origin it is. If the chocolate is Madagascar, for example, we’re looking for its characteristic tangy citrus and berry flavor, and a sharp acidity balanced by a pleasant creaminess. If I think my square matches these sensations, and otherwise tastes good, I’ll probably give it a 7.5 or 8. If it’s exceptional I’ll give it a 9. If there’s something slightly off about it, I’ll say it’s a 6 or 7. If there’s a score of 5 or below, something about the chocolate has caused enough concern that we need to stop what we’re doing and investigate. Or cry.

Elman gives this one an 8.

When I first started working on the production floor, I would relish the requirement to eat these squares not only because I enjoyed them, but also because I was introducing my uninitiated palate to the nuances of our chocolate that change from day to day, and shift to shift. I felt particularly special, a part of a greater process of judgement and consensus, a member of a group that understood sensory subtlety. I felt like I moved in some fancy echelon of connoisseurs who can discern the difference between a 6, a 7, and an 8. That was a particularly juicy feeling considering I was not, nor am I now, a connoisseur, rather just a person who really likes, and now really knows, good chocolate.

This is how we score chocolate, every day.

And now, as Obed insists that I eat this square of a Madagascar bar so he can record my score, I take it, break it in half, and swallow my reluctance. I just had lunch and I have no desire for Madagascar’s tart jab and mouth-coating tendencies. And I had a whole square this morning, plus I had a few spoonfuls of it yesterday, and right now one more square feels like an overdose. I can easily imagine what it tastes like, I’ve tasted it a million times before, so I could half-heartedly chew and swallow and score it, followed by a quick chase of coffee if I wanted. But, like I said, dear reader, my job does require that I eat a lot of chocolate every day. It’s days like this one that challenge me the most, that oblige me to steel myself against the ennui of another bite of chocolate. And so, in consideration of just about every other job I could be holding in this world, and any other thing I could be eating, I eat the half square. I let it melt and express its full range across my tongue, and remember exactly what it is that makes my friends jealous when I tell them what I do for a living.

Sake and Chocolate: A Complex Relationship

May 5, 2016 by Cynthia Jonasson

Our latest pairing endeavor started when we took a recent tour of Sequoia Sake’s small microbrewery at the edge of San Francisco. We realized pretty quickly that there were many parallels between Sequoia Sake and Dandelion Chocolate, and the idea came to us in a flash: let’s do a pairing!

The most obvious similarity between the bean-to-bar process and Sequoia’s sake is the fermentation step, which is a key flavor developer in both products. Secondly, we both take a minimalist approach to our ingredients: Sequoia’s sake is Junmai, meaning it only uses water, rice, koji, and yeast, and Dandelion’s chocolate has only two ingredients: beans and sugar. Finally, Sequoia’s thoughtful choices at each step of the process were focused on creating the highest quality product rather than taking shortcuts, which reminds me of the way we sometimes do things the hard way to keep our product’s integrity and improve quality.

At first, when I asked some friends to taste the sake and chocolate together, they agreed because they liked one or the other but none of them thought the tastes would mix well. Surprising ourselves, we soon found that both products had layers of complexity that made it hard for us all to agree on our favorite combinations because they were all so interesting. It was really fascinating to see how pairing Dandelion’s Madagascar chocolate with Sequoia’s Genshu sake brought out the more vegetal notes that would usually be overshadowed by Madagascar’s strong, tart, fruity notes. But when paired with the more subtle Nama sake, it brought out elegant fruity and floral notes from Madagascar’s flavor range. Neither was a bad pairing, but each allowed us to more clearly taste notes that aren’t as evident when tasting the bar alone.

Inspired by all the parallels we found between our process and product and everything that Sequoia does, we decided to develop new class which will take place at Sequoia Sake’s Brewery starting Thursday May 26th at 6:30pm. Find tickets on our classes page, right here.

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Guests from the sake industry previewing our new class.

Our class will start with a tour of Sequoia Sake’s factory to explore sake processing, and then we’ll taste samples from various parts of the process along the way. We’ll end with a flight of Sequoia Sake, then move along to learning about chocolate production with tastes from different steps of that process, culminating with a chocolate flight. Finally, we’ll leave participants to pick and pair as they please, exploring the range of flavor possibilities inherent in bringing these two crafts together.

Chocolate in India: A Conversation with Arun Viswanathan

April 26, 2016 by Alex Voynow

Arun Viswanathan is the chocolatier at the helm of Ganache for Da Chocoholics, a chocolaterie out of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. On a sourcing trip to the Coimbatore region in late 2015, Greg, our Chocolate Sourcerer, met Arun. While visiting the U.S. in February, Arun decided to come by our Valencia street location for a few days to learn how we make chocolate from the bean, in the hopes of bringing those skills back to his company in Coimbatore. We caught up with Arun towards the end of his time here to learn more about his business and the chocolate industry in India.

Hi Arun!

Hey!

So, it’s been great to work with you for the past few days on the production floor here. What’s your background, and what do you do in India?

Well, I got my masters in food science and technology from Cornell University, and later I got my second masters in food engineering and marketing in India. Studying food science, I realized there that chocolate is one of the only fields where I get to bring in a lot of science and creativity.

From there I decided I wanted to specialize in chocolates. Then, I was in Bruges, Belgium, where I got certified as a chocolatier, making bonbons, truffles, and pralines. I worked in a store called The Chocolate Line, run by Dominique Persoone—one of the best [chocolatiers] in Belgium. So then I got back to India, and started my own company—Ganache for Da Chocoholics. We opened our first store in June last year, and now we plan to expand to other cities in India.

What kind of chocolate do you make?

Basically we’re working on the Indianization of Belgian chocolates.

What does that mean?

If you look into a box of our chocolates, you would find flavors like saffron, lemon and pepper, Madras filter coffee, which is like a South Indian delicacy, Gulabi Lassi, which is a rose petal-based product. We also do international flavors like Wasabi, and now we work with farmers in India to help them develop good quality cocoa which we intend to use over time.

What is your relationship with the farmers?

In the global market, Indian farmers are slowly getting recognized for growing cacao, and we would like to one day soon make a single-origin chocolate from Indian cocoa. We’re building a factory now where we want to produce Indian bean-to-bar chocolates.

Have you found a difference between Americans’ taste and the Indian palate? Is there a culture of bean-to-bar chocolate making there?

The American market and Indian market are similar in one way: they both like sweet and milk chocolate, but dark chocolate is definitely surging in popularity in both countries, possibly because the health benefits of dark chocolate are more well-known now. I would say we expect the Indian market in five years to be where the U.S. chocolate market is today—supporting the small batch bean-to-bar chocolate makers, and our chocolate.

Right now you’re selling to people in Coimbatore, which is your home base. Are you selling anywhere else?

Also in Chennai. But we’re planning a franchising model, and we have a factory coming up. Once we have more production capacity, we will be selling it in those two cities plus Bangalore. The factory will also be in Coimbatore, right near all the cocoa farms. We can use all the fresh produce from the farms, which after learning here [at Dandelion], fresh cocoa makes the chocolate taste a lot better.

Bean-to-bar chocolate is so different from the way chocolate has been made for decades. Are there people where you’re from that are skeptical of your chocolate business?

Yes—people are sometimes a little bit skeptical about whether I should be planning for a trend that won’t be existing in the very near future. But from what I’ve noticed, there’s been a really good response so far. We’re coming up with a lot of new concepts and plans, and it’s definitely just the beginning of what we want to do. So someday, we hope to enter the American market. We also started doing workshops for people in India on chocolate, and I’ve also done a chocolate workshop at Cornell University.

For those who want to make chocolate in India, what are the difficulties that you and others face?

First of all, it’s the market. We have to educate every customer on why the chocolates we make are expensive. So once they understand that, and taste it, they really enjoy it. I wouldn’t really call it an issue, it’s just hard work. Another problem is the sourcing of the cocoa, and specifically the licensing of it. Because it’s a new market, it can be hard to understand how licensing and exporting works, or what laws we need to follow. In terms of bean-to-bar in India, there isn’t really anyone to look up to, so we really have to rely on Google. Other than that, there aren’t really any problems, just huge potential. There’s a huge population who have travelled well, been educated abroad, and who want to taste good products.

You’ve been spending some time at Dandelion, do you have any favorite bars here?

I really like the Zorzal, and I think Madagascar was good too. I’ve eaten so much chocolate here that it’s hard to know what’s what. There was one that I really, really liked, I forget which one though.

Was it Guatemala?

Yes! Guatemala is my favorite. So Guatemala, Zorzal, Madagascar. 1, 2, 3.

It’s been really fun to work with you. What was it like working at Dandelion for a minute?

I’ll put it this way: In India, there’s this grandmother’s philosophy that says when you’re happy in the kitchen, the food always tastes good. I think that comes through a lot in your chocolate. On the production team, I couldn’t see a single face who didn’t enjoy what they were doing. I definitely think that’s one of the main reasons why the chocolate tastes so good. You guys have so much fun here, I don’t know if i’ve had as much fun as I’ve had here in my own factory! I feel like it’s a huge part of your success.

Well gee. I think we do genuinely have fun on the production floor, and it really feels like we’re a team. It’s special that you actually noticed it! Thanks for taking some time to sit down with me.

A Visit to Steelgrass Farm

April 1, 2016 by Molly Gore

Last month, I took a week off and packed my bags for Hawai’i. I chose Maui and Kauai in February because a) I thought it might never stop raining in San Francisco and Hawaii seemed as good an antidote as any, and b) because the Maui coast is impossibly thick with humpback whales this time of year. I love whales.

Those with the good sense to research their vacations better than I do would have learned that Kauai is home to Mount Waialeale which, with an average of 450 inches of rainfall a year, is also sometimes known as The Wettest Place On Earth (and not the first place you might go for a rain-free vacation). But no matter, trudging through volcanic mud feels a whole lot better than weathering a downpour in the city. Over the ten days I was there I hiked the Nā Pali coast, slept on beaches, but despite my plans to really take some time away—and like a lot of chocolate makers who try to go on vacation—I ended up chasing chocolate anyway.

Steelgrass Farm sits on the eastern edge of Kauai at 22° above the equator—about as far north as you can get and still grow cacao. I’ve known about Steelgrass for a few years—it’s a family-run farm that we’ve led customer trips to, and Will Lydgate, one of the younger Lydgates who helps manage the farm, stops by Dandelion whenever he’s in town. I’ve tasted their honey and their chocolate when it shows up at Dandelion, but I was thrilled to get to see it myself.

Rambutan! It tastes better than it looks.

Steelgrass is a cacao farm, but it’s also a wildly diverse demonstration of just about every delicious thing that grows on Kaua’i. On the farm’s chocolate tour, you get to see vanilla vines climbing their way up foxtail palms, Tahitian lime trees, and soursop fruits as big as melons ready for picking. We tasted milky star apples, sweet and clear rambutan, pear-like mountain apples, spicy watermelon radishes sprinkled with Hawaiian salt, and the farm’s award-winning honey. (We licked the plate when no one was looking.)

Mountain apples that taste like mild pears.

We watched our tour guide, Andrea, make paper by hand from a stand of invasive papyrus reeds that spread like wildfire throughout the farm. We passed by trays of thousands of vanilla beans curing in the sun, each from a blossom pollinated by hand. Then, we tasted our way through a mix of chocolate made by Valrhona, Guittard, Manoa and more while Andrea fed us an incredibly dense and detailed history of chocolate. The three hours I spent at Steelgrass were three of the most densely educational that I can remember.

Andrea about to chop open a cocoa pod with a machete.

Right now, Steelgrass has about 200 trees under cultivation, and plans to plant 3,000 more. After the tour, Tony Lydgate drove us to the land he’s converting and preparing for expansion, and walked us through a grove of two-year-old saplings that were already fruiting. Most people will say that cacao trees don’t fruit for three to five years, so it was especially surprising to see Tony’s trees looking so happy and heavy with pods.

Tony and the trees.

We were also surprised to learn that the trees which appeared to be the healthiest were in fact planted directly from seed, not grafted or planted from saplings raised in a nursery which is far more common. To decide which trees to plant, Steelgrass worked with the University of Hawai’i to discern which genetic mixes would yield the best and most delicious beans. The expansion is a large and exciting one, and I can’t wait to come visit again as soon as my Steelgrass honey jar is empty. If I keep going at the pace I’m going, that could be tomorrow.

Q & A: Pearl Wong

March 7, 2016 by Molly Gore

Every other Monday (most of the time), we’ll introduce you to a member of the Dandelion community through a Q & A. Stay tuned to meet our chocolate makers, café staff, kitchen team, producers, partners, importers, mentors, and everyone who helps make our chocolate possible. This week, we’d like you to meet Pearl, one of our former chocolate makers who took some time off to get deep into every facet of chocolate making and the cacao supply chain last year, and has since returned to help us open in Japan.

Name: Pearl Wong (or PWONG)

Hometown: Trumbull, CT

Job Title: Consultant – Interim Production Manager for Kuramae

Worked at Dandelion since: March 2013 – June 2015 (San Francisco), November 2015-present (Dandelion Japan)

Q: What do you do at Dandelion in Japan?

Seiji, CEO of Dandelion Chocolate Japan, hired me to set up production at Kuramae and train chocolate makers on the Dandelion chocolate making process.

Q: What is your favorite part of what you do?

We temper by hand (using a marble slab) right now because the test batches are too small to go through the Unica. This means everyone really gets to learn what is happening during the tempering process. I thought it would be easiest to learn that if they had to stir and mold the chocolate by hand.

I love tempering – it’s a beautifully complex process and it feels like the chocolate is talking to you about where it’s at and what it needs to be predominantly Form V (the ideal crystal structure that we want the cocoa butter to take). Also, chocolate tastes great when it’s been well-tempered. And I like tasty chocolate.

Q: How does tempering affect the taste of chocolate?

Basically it changes the way the cocoa butter melts in your mouth and therefore how your mouth draws out the flavors, whether it involves a bit more work on your part or just more time. So, how these flavors are perceived will change due to the crystal structure of your tempering. Not to mention a whole ‘nother set of factors like smells, sounds, and other people’s influence. But I find tempering is a factor that gets a little overlooked.

For an analogy – think of a time you had one type of soup. One time you had it fresh and hot. The other time you had it cold the next day because you don’t own a microwave and extra dishes are work. Think about how those two experiences were different or similar!

Q: Cold soup? Ew. What does your typical day look like?

I stroll in around 8:30AM to write up the plan (we start at 9AM); vacuum out the roaster; take lids off the melangers and test batches; taste everything, and the day just flows from there. Every day we do most of the steps in chocolate making even though we’re still mostly at the test batches phase (i.e. 1 kilo batches).

Q: How are the test batches going? Is the process different at all because you’re in Japan?

Well, the overall Dandelion process hasn’t changed – we’re doing a ton of experiments to narrow down the flavor profile of each bean. But the additional work I’m doing here is to figure out our 10 kilo roaster which uses a different heating element and therefore it has changed our roasting style from Valencia. It’s been pretty interesting because I’ve been roasting manually – something we almost never do at Valencia. And I’ve been roasting cacao as though I were roasting coffee (to a bean temperature rather than to a set time). I’ve been really enjoying the learning process of how this roasting style affects the flavor of cacao. I’ve also been able to dial in the roaster a lot better now that I’m working with Camino Verde beans. They are the beans I am most familiar with since I spent 6 weeks on the farm helping to harvest, ferment, and dry them last fall.”

Q: What’s the most challenging thing you’ve confronted in the last month?

The way companies are structured here is a little different, and working within new kinds of hierarchies takes some getting use to mainly because I’m not a hierarchical person at all. There are so many different etiquettes in business you have to observe. Little things always get lost in translation, so learning to manage here is just different.

The 10-kilo US Roaster and now the used Hobart cutter mixer can be mechanically challenging too. So I guess another continually challenging aspect is dealing with equipment that doesn’t behave the way you expect it to and/or breaks down unexpectedly.

Q: But what else is new, right?

True, it’s not really a chocolate factory until everything breaks down at least once or twice, and then on a monthly or weekly basis. Sometimes I wonder if being a good chocolate maker really means being able to troubleshoot and fix up the machines that make the chocolate.

What happens when you don’t give the Hobart cutter mixer a day off? It takes a day off anyway.

Q: Big question: what’s your favorite chocolate?

Ugh this kind of question is tough to answer because it really depends on my mood. But I always love Marou’s bars (Vietnam). Their Treasure Island is my favorite of their line. I think 24Blackbirds (Santa Barbara) makes great two-ingredient chocolate, as does Letterpress Chocolate (LA). Also, Bar au Chocolat (LA) makes beautiful Madagascar and Bahia, Brazil bars, and their packaging is some of the best I’ve seen. Finally, Om Nom (Iceland) is another one of my favorites for their packaging, and their Papua New Guinea bar is great.

From Dandelion? The Madagascar from 2014 and 2012 are my favorites, as are Mantuano and Öko-Caribe 2014. I will always cherish the original Papua New Guinea bar from 2012 which, by the way, I still have a few of, and I think I must be the only one in the world with these bars now. Obviously, the unicorn Camino Verde 70% 2013 bar is a favorite. Too bad it was too thick to temper.

Q: Sorry to interrupt, but I thought I was the only one who hoarded 2012 Papua New Guinea bars. I keep them locked in a golden box buried three miles underground. I love them.

That’s weird, how would you ever get the chocolate out of the ground to eat it? But honestly there are a lot of great bean-to-bar makers out there, so it’s hard to call out just one favorite. It highly depends on what I’m craving that day. And also I’m very picky, so what I really like might not be reflective of other people’s taste preferences. For example, I only named dark chocolate bars above because that’s my go-to chocolate type. I’m highly biased against milk bars, so you shouldn’t trust my opinion on milk chocolate.

Anyway, my point is: always remember that these things are highly subjective to the individual. Find out what you like and stick with it – don’t worry too much about what experts, foodies, or judges tell you are good or bad.

Q: Good advice. Tell me about Kuramae.

Kuramae is a town within Tokyo. It is considered old Tokyo because there haven’t been as much development here, so there aren’t skyscrapers everywhere. The architecture is also quite old in the neighborhood. It’s quiet, mostly residential, but has some neat craftsmen shops and great little restaurants that are owned and operated by just one or two people.

One of my favorite spots is the 500 yen sushi don (sushi rice bowl, like a chirashi) take-out window. They serve fresh sashimi on top of flavorful sushi rice. And did I mention it’s stupid cheap? 500 yen. That’s less than five dollars.

Another favorite is a handmade soba noodle shop that is literally called the soba izakaya (izakaya means pub). I haven’t gotten to try everything on the menu, but I hope to be able to do so before I finish my assignment.

Q: That is stupid cheap. Speaking of things that are not stupid cheap, do you miss San Francisco?

Not at all. I’m surprised how many people are trying to live in the Bay Area right now. It’s kind of crazy considering all the other great and affordable places where you could be living comfortably, instead of fighting for an old apartment/studio lease with 50 other people. And the even better thing is that you can find local coffee roasters and brewers and chocolate makers almost everywhere in the US. I know because I took a road trip across the country last summer and I found all the comforts I enjoyed in San Francisco, elsewhere.

Q: Ok fine, sure, whatever. Just try to change your mind, okay? San Francisco misses you.