Allow me to introduce myself
Posted: October 11th, 2011
My love affair with chocolate started when I was a child. Growing up in my fathers Bakery I developed and appreciation for all things handcrafted. Not only did I learn the art and science of working with food but I learned the value of pursuit and finding perfection through my own art and others. As a child my family traveled extensively through Europe for months at a time. We were voyeurs of food. We traveled simply with a quest to find the best bread and pastries in every city or town we visited. I have a vivid memory of driving around Vienna an entire day looking for one particular cafeĢ my dad had to go!
As and adult I carry on this tradition searching for the best, chocolate, coffee everywhere I travel. A day in Paris for me is searching out the best chocolate, collecting it and sleeping in intervals so I can taste it all before I go out and find more the next day.
About 2 years ago after a decade as a Pastry Chef in fine dining restaurants I turned in my towel for a new one; one that honored rare cocoa beans by handcrafting pure origin chocolate.
Collection absolute, my signature collection is composed of perfectly tempered paves, thin squares delicate in size and precise in shape. They are made with the purist origin chocolate I can find. I refer to my chocolate as pure origin because it goes beyond fair trade, single origin, single estate and organic. I work with chocolate producers that collaborate science with nature. This technique allows the cocoa beans to capture the natural elements, purity and flavor that surround them creating originality and depth in the chocolate itself. Each chocolate I find has naturally occurring flavor profiles so defined they invite me to enhance a flavor that is present or add another to craft something unique and refined.
Pursuit and experience are the foundation to my personal interpretation of {cocoa}.
