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The New Chocolatiers
Saturday, 19 December 2009


Dion Kagan goes in search of the trends propelling the explosion of Australian choctiques and along the way gets a crash course in choco-politics.

'I never met a chocolate I didn't like', said Deanna Troi, the half-human, half-Betazoid resident counsellor on Star Trek: The Next Generation's ship, the Enterprise. Counsellor Troi, or "counsellor cleavage" as my friend prefers to call her, was known for her empathic ability to sense people's emotions. And chocolate? Well, we all know that chocolate is intimately tied to the emotional life. But if enjoying a delicious choccie or two can sometimes give rise to feelings of guilt or shame, it's probably for all the wrong reasons.

In Australia, eating chocolate has more of these connotations than it does in Europe, where its consumption - usually in dark form, and usually in moderation - is much more of an everyday practice. I'm certain this is partly because of the way chocolate is sold to us, on the telly and elsewhere - aggressively marketed to women, often presented as a substitute for love (or sex). Or, like sex, construed as indulgent, risky, or irresistibly sinful. Much like beer, which we also know can be bad for us is large quantities but which people binge on anyway, chocolate fits all too comfortably with moments of misery (or even just mild self-loathing).


A dazzling array of deliciousness at Monsieur Truffe
(photo: Rohan Young)
Chocolate as guilty pleasure also has something to do with our culture of eating milk chocolate, which has far higher quantities of sugar than dark. With dark, you get a bigger hit of cocoa, which means you need to eat far less to feel satisfied; hence the compulsion to binge on milk.

As Arnold Ismach, author of The Darker Side of Chocolate writes, 'all of the evil that people have thrust upon chocolate is really more deserved by milk chocolate, which is essentially contaminated. The closer you get to a pure chocolate liquor (the chocolate essence ground from roasted cacao beans) the purer it is, the more satisfying it is, the safer it is, and the healthier it is.'

In spite of the guilt factor, Australia's taste for chocolate is on the rise.

According to an article in the Age's Epicure last year, we spent $1.8 billion on chocolate in 2007, up $168 million from 2002. This amounted to an increase of around four kilos of chocolate per person, per year. Another manifestation of the cocoa craving has been the appearance of and apparently irrepressible proliferation of upscale chocolatiers - initially just in urban centres, but also increasingly, in suburban shopping malls and now even airports.

I'm speaking of boutiques like haute chocolate salon Kokoblack which opened its first store in 2003, the charmingly named Max Brenner: Chocolate by the Bald Man, which originated in Israel, and Belgian-influenced Cacao, the self-styled "Louis Vuitton of chocolate boutiques".

Most of these have a coffee and food menu too, but the emphasis is on a selection of delicate, high-quality, "authentic" chocolate products, presented opulently, selected by you, and packaged by gloved hands in fussy boxes with crepe paper and bows. These delicacies are typically melted on-premises by locally trained chocolatiers using Dutch, Belgian, Swiss or Spanish styles. They're unashamedly top-end, and folks are lapping them up like Wonka bars. At the time of writing, the now-ubiquitous Chocolateria San Churro, famous for its Churros (Spanish doughnuts) served with a pot of melted couverture, is currently ranked 22 in Australia's 100 fastest growing companies, with stores popping up faster than you can say "save some room for later Augustus".


A dazzling array of deliciousness at Monsieur Truffe
(photo: Rohan Young)
Here's another reliable statistic from cartoonist John Q. Tullius: 'Nine out of ten people like chocolate. The tenth person always lies.' So, if everyone loves chocolate, it seems a lot of us aren't averse to adding a touch of extravagance to our consumption of it. It's no surprise then that these chichi chocolatiers began popping up around this country during a time of relative affluence and increased leisure spending (the early noughties). And because chocolate is an affordable indulgence - offering a little bit of luxury at an ostensibly manageable price - this burgeoning market of sophisticated chocolatiques doesn't seem to have been much melted by the global financial crisis.

Indeed, in spite of the ongoing precariousness of the US economy, Max Brenner's American stores are expanding — business saw an increase of almost 15 percent last year. The bald man explains it thus:

'At this time, people find comfort food, especially chocolate, as something that gives them some happiness. It is some indulgence in this not-so-comfortable situation, and therefore, they come here to find their legal drug' (FoxBusiness, October 29, 2009).

A rather more modest example of this café/chocolatier phenomenon is Monsieur Truffe, located in Smith Street, Fitzroy, the very heart of Melbourne's gentrified bohemia. Described in Gourmet Traveller's list of The Best Food of 2009 as 'most chilled-out chocolatier', Truffe is indeed laid back (recycled timber shelving, industrial light-fittings and a big, beautiful forest scene wall mural), but reveals a carefully considered collection of single-origin chocolates, organic roasted coffee beans, truffles of course, and other (literally) melt-in-your-mouth treats.

The chilled-out chocolatier behind the concept is Thibault Fregoni, a French man with a passion for the c-bean, both quality and ethics. He also has a delightfully unceremonious generosity with his accumulated wisdom, is happy to chatter away, and runs chocolate tasting and appreciation classes. In addition to the chocs, Truffe serves a delicious range of croissants, pane chocolate, escargot and flourless chocolate cake all baked on-premises, and a range of incredible chocolate and coffee drinks.

I followed Fregoni from his origins in Prahran market, (where he started selling chocolate in 2005), to the café in Fitzroy, where since 2008 I've been cultivating a newfound obsession with the soy mocha. I dropped in recently hoping to learn more about the trends propelling and characterizing the choc-tique craze. What I got was a crash course in the complex politics and economics of chocolate.


Scrumptious selections at Monsieur Truffe
(photo: Rohan Young)
When I arrive at Fregoni's kitchen, he's busy preparing mondiante - thin rounds of chocolate just a little smaller than a mint slice, with a basic mixture of crushed nuts and tiny slivers of candied orange rind.

'It means "beggar"', he explains. 'It's a common name for little things like this. What happen[ed] is, in the past, when it used to be more of a village setting, [a] patisserie or bakery would just do little things with leftovers, to give to the beggars, as a charity thing for the Sundays.'

To me, this starts to encapsulate something about the philosophy of Monsieur Truffe. Fregoni's specialty is single origin chocolate and his range includes mini and sharing-sized bars from Bolivia, Madagascar, Venezuela and Paupa New Guinea, many of these with high percentages of cocoa. The delicacies are simple but delicious; less decorating and packaging, more quality ingredients. He is conscious not to use any plastic packaging in the store, so even his straws are biodegradable - made from corn.

Talking about the different European styles and influence on chocolate making, he explains: 'I'm not a fanatic of the Belgium style. It's a lot of well-decorated chocolate with a lot of fillings. For me, this detracts. I'm more interested in using the chocolate as the raw ingredient.'

He hastens to add that this is his style and his perspective, and that the great thing about the proliferation of chocolate providers in Australia is that 'it offers a different point of view and you can decide for yourself.'

Fregoni is clear in distinguishing his chocolate from the Belgian style - which traditionally has lots of butter cream, pralines and fillings. 'To me, there are some beautiful ones', Fregoni says. 'To me, if it's well decorated and it's a beautiful chocolate, [then] fine. But if it's only well decorated and you can't taste the chocolate, to me, what's the point? So I'm trying to step away from this kind of appeal to the eye… I'm very happy with a small bar. Just the chocolate, and this is it.'


Hot deliciousness Monsieur Truffe
(photo: Rohan Young)
'I think it should be accessible', he adds. 'And at the end of the day, because we spend less time decorating, we can afford to use much higher quality chocolate'.

So, does the Monsieur make his own chocolate? 'Not yet… There is only one in Australia. It's Haighs. The rest is [sic] melters.'

This is the first thing I've learnt about the providence of chocolate. People may advertise themselves as chocolate "makers", but it's not quite the truth. Fregoni explains the process: 'What they get is the cocoa liquor, and they melt the cocoa liquor, and they make the chocolate from that…but they're not selecting the cocoa beans, they're not roasting the cocoa beans…Haighs are the only Australian chocolate maker, in the traditional way.'

Back in the day, chocolate companies like MacRobertson and Cadbury made their chocolate from scratch, roasting and grading the dried and fermented cocoa beans, grinding them into the liquid known as chocolate liquor or cocoa liquor. The final stages of this process are conching (to give the chocolate a smooth texture) and tempering, which ensure the chocolate will snap when it's broken, rather than crumbling. Because this all involves a lot of machinery, chocolate makers became specialised overtime, and began to on-sell to chocolatiers, who, like Fregoni, then make and sell their delicacies.

However, Fregoni is aiming to start making his own. From scratch. 'I'm looking for a premises at the moment, and we're importing machinery from all over the world. The idea is for us to be in control, from the selection of the beans to the manufacturing, and not have to melt someone else's chocolate. So, that's the aim.'

Doing things from scratch means better quality control, but it also means that the business can be more socially aware. Chocolate, like coffee, is a political and economic minefield, and even with the advent of fair-trade certification and plantation co-operatives, there is still so much potential for exploitation. But it's a very complex commodity.

The largest cocoa bean producing countries in the world are Côte d'Ivoire (commonly known in English as the Ivory Coast) and Ghana, comprising over fifty percent of world production. Indonesia, Cameroon, Nigeria, Brazil, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Malaysia are also all significant producers. The classic West African plantation involves hundreds of thousands of families, living very close together, each with a tiny plot, with probably three or four cocoa trees. Generally, these growers sell their cocoa pods in a local village, where they get peanuts for it.

However, between the grower and the chocolate manufacturer there are a heap of middle men, the price of the beans gets totally inflated, but still, the people at the root don't get much out of it. 'They grow cocoa beans, they grow bananas, they grown anything on their plot to survive,' Fregoni laments.

The poverty of these farmers also means they're unable to take the best care of the growing environments. Fregoni says that you can't deny that the Fairtrade movement, like the organic movement, has helped to improve this situation, but its tricky and very hard to generalise. Like with organics, many producers are not going to bother to get the fairtrade certification stamp.

'Why would they?…Most of them are too poor to pay for chemicals anyway. And they're too poor to get accreditation. So, sometimes it's a tricky one…a lot of plantations aren't accredited because of the costs involved.'

Another way of improving the situation for both growers at one end, and retailers at the other, is through direct trade and plantation cooperatives.


A dazzling array of deliciousness at Monsieur Truffe
(photo: Rohan Young)
'What they're hoping for is cooperatives, where all these tiny plots become one co-op, and then they can make sure the beans are dried properly [and] fermented properly. And when that happens, they can get a better price on the crop. And if I buy them, I know its better quality.'

This can also be a tricky one, as smaller farmers may not be able to afford to be part of these co-operatives. Nonetheless, these more ethical and labour-conscious process of securing the cocoa product are a significant factor in Fregoni's vision to produce his own chocolate.

'I've got contacts in Tanzania, and a few countries where we actually will buy the cocoa bean directly from them. So there is a transparency of where it's from, and what we pay, and everything. We want to deal with established cooperatives [so] its transparent, and, in the future, to try to get involved with creating co-operatives.'

Whilst he explains this, Fregoni is rushing into an out of the café kitchen, melting, creating, and interacting with staff and customers. As I begin to feel it might be time to leave him to his pre-Christmas buzz, I begin to feel also that I might be starting to have different feelings about eating chocolate.

The point of all of this chocolate politics is not to start feeling excessive amounts of guilt on top of the shame you already feel for eating a whole block of Dairy Milk Caramello and a half a packet of Clinkers in front of an episode of Star Trek. Rather, why not take a leaf out of the European book, and enjoy chocolate regularly, if a bit more moderately. And why not eat it thoughtfully. Perhaps try to understand a little more about the humble cocoa tree where the beans you're chomping on originated, rather than pretending it was plopped out onto a purple conveyor belt by an oompa lumpa in the Fudge room at the end of a giant extraction pipe that leads into a river of chocolate.

Musing again on the difference of style in Monsieur Truffe in comparison to some of the other new choctiques on the block, Fregoni says: 'When you buy chocolate, it's a luxury good. It's almost like a jewel, you know. You have a little box and you open it, and it's beautiful. [But] for me, I'm more like, I'm more…'

He pauses to think of the best way to describe what he's envisioning. 'I'd rather see a field with the cocoa tree than the posh white glove. You see the difference?'

Dion Kagan

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