It is great to see an article that is focused on the successful small chocolatier. These craftspeople sometimes get lost in the media rush to products from the bigger companies with big marketing budgets.

Thinking Outside the Chocolate Box

BY BECKY AIKMAN, STAFF WRITER, Newsday.com, February 7, 2005

Artisans are making confections to die for and cooking up big sales the old-fashioned way: by hand, in small shops

It's hard to believe that the spare little storefront on Thompson Street in SoHo could be the right place. The current issue of Gourmet magazine calls the chocolates there some of the best in the United States. The Zagat Marketplace Survey rates them 29 out of 30 for quality. And tour groups of dedicated foodies squeeze inside for tastings of crème-brûlée- or green-tea-flavored chocolates.

But inside the Kee's Chocolates shop, barely the size of a newsstand, chocolatier Kee Ling Tong tends the counter and answers the phone alone, all while hand-stirring a pot of chocolate on a single-burner hot plate.

Small is big

It's all very simple, but that's the point. In the world of fine chocolates today, small and simple is big.

As lovers set out this Valentine's Day to find sweets for their sweethearts, more of them than ever are seeking out small, artisanal chocolatiers like Kee's in search of intense flavor, freshness and the loving touch that only handmade food imparts.

"If I mass-produced, I could grow faster," Tong said as she prepared a batch of truffles on a recent afternoon. As it is, sales at her shop increased 30 percent last year. "But when you mass-produce, you lose the quality."

Typically, chocolatiers temper their chocolate to make it smooth and shiny by alternately heating and cooling it in vats equipped with automatic stirrers. Thermometers determine when to adjust the temperature. But Tong stirs continuously for 20 or 30 minutes with only her slender right arm, starting over when she's interrupted by customers, and she judges temperature by feel alone.

"You don't need high-tech," said Joyce Weinberg, who had stopped by Kee's to pick up an order. Weinberg's company, New York Food Tours & Events, brings tour groups to Kee's and features her chocolates at tastings. "You just need the skill and the artisanship and the great ingredients," Weinberg said. "That's the secret to all great food."

Once, the secret to impressing a Valentine might have been a gold-foil box from an importer of European chocolates, like Godiva from Belgium. Then celebrity chocolate makers in New York, such as Francois Payard and Food Network chef Jacques Torres, introduced deluxe domestic confections. Now smaller, lesser known chocolatiers are springing up around the country.

Educated about chocolate

Increasingly, their customers are sophisticated and knowledgeable. They recognize that Venezuelan cocoa beans, for example, taste more bitter than those from Madagascar, which are a bit sour. And they know that a chocolate with a cacao content of 60 or 70 percent is more intense than one with the 40 percent often found in fine milk chocolate or the less than 20 percent in a commercial candy bar. Next to artisanal chocolates, connoisseurs claim, even high-end mass-produced alternatives seem waxy, bland and overly sweet.

"It's the same phenomenon as coffee and cheese and wine over the last 25 or 30 years," said Alison Nelson, owner of Chocolate Bar, a West Village shop that features chocolates by Garrison Confections of Providence, R.I., and Sweet Bliss and Jacques Torres of New York. "More and more, the general consumer is learning about foods that don't contain preservatives or other fake ingredients. They have the opportunity to taste it, and they go, 'Wow.'"

So did Nelson when she saw sales at her 600-square-foot shop, open since May 2002, double in the past two years to $1 million a year. Other retailers report similar success. At Whole Foods stores nationwide, sales of artisanal chocolates tripled within the last 18 months. Bierkraft, a specialty store in Park Slope, holds tastings by chocolatier Eric Girerd of Greenpoint that are standing-room-only.

Good chocolate's not cheap

Chocolate lovers seem willing to pay for their vice. At Kee's, for example, a single chocolate costs $1.75. A box of 24 is $37. That adds up. Specialty or gourmet chocolates contribute between $1 billion and $2 billion to the total U.S. chocolate market of $14.6 billion, according to the Chocolate Manufacturers Association.

The trade group hasn't tracked the growth of artisanal chocolates. However, its polls show a shift in public taste. Ten years ago only 20 percent of Americans preferred dark chocolate, usually the choice for gourmet chocolatiers, but now 35 percent do.

Urban phenomenon

For chocolate makers outside of major cities, though, coaxing customers to try bitter chocolates flavored with ingredients like chile peppers or balsamic vinegar can still be a challenge.

"There's definitely a much greater market than there was before," said Laure de Montebello, executive chef of Sans Souci Gourmet Confections in Port Jefferson. "In Manhattan there's a new chocolate boutique practically every day. But here it's very different. We have a bigger challenge weaning people away from very American-style confections to something a lot less sweet. People want to see their milk chocolate. They want their butter creams - all the things you might see in a Whitman's Sampler. I don't even know how to make one."

A chef who worked at the Manhattan restaurants Le Bernardin and Windows on the World, de Montebello hand-rolls only dark chocolates and usually puts out samples to educate the customers. As a result, in two years, chocolates have gone from 25 percent of the shop's sales to more than 50 percent, with other confections and pastries making up the rest. "Most people - once they taste it, that's really all it takes," de Montebello said.

Career change

Kee Ling Tong found her way to chocolate making after 15 years in the financial industry. She went to cooking school to study baking but then couldn't find a job after 9/11. So she spent her days at home practicing making chocolate before she opened her shop in June 2002.

A native of Macao and Hong Kong, Tong experimented with Asian flavors like Thai chiles and black sesame along with classics like champagne and passion fruit. Her signature crème-brûlée-filled chocolate is hard to find anywhere else - its shelf life is only two days, because Tong uses fresh custard.

Last weekend, Joyce Weinberg escorted a tour to Kee's and other chocolate shops. She told the group how a woman she had brought on a previous tour tasted Kee's crème brûlée chocolate, paused and said, "I need a moment and a cigarette."

Then Weinberg passed around samples to members of last week's group. They took a moment, too, before several members said, "Oh, my God."

"You can tell the difference between it and something like Godiva," said Nina Gramaglia, a Manhattan advertising executive. "You can tell it hasn't been sitting in a box. The ingredients are really fresh, and the chocolate has a depth to it."

"That is amazing," said Jane Bloom, who manages a wine and liquor store in Northport. "I need to go into a chocolate coma."

Then she pulled herself together and delivered the compliment all artisanal chocolatiers aspire to receive: "It's like she made it just for me."

>>BACK TO FOOD FOR THOUGHT and the list of articles