Chocolate lovers can find cocoa heaven in Chicago, where a chocolate aroma wafts through the city when the wind is just right, and specialty tours lead people around town trolling for truffles.
As the new home of the U.S. Chocolate Academy, Chi-town is primed to become even more of a chocolate town.
Last month, chocolate giant Barry Callebaut opened its first U.S. Chocolate Academy in the old Montgomery Ward warehouse, at 600 W. Chicago Ave.
The Academy trains professionals — such as pastry chefs, restaurateurs and food manufacturers — to achieve chocolate excellence through courses that range from making ganache to plating desserts to designing chocolate sculptures (all classes are $580 for two-day courses or $800 for three-day courses). The Academy hopes to eventually offer courses to the general public.
“We want this to be the destination for chocolate everything,” said Sarah O’Neil, director of marketing for Barry Callebaut North America, which moved its headquarters to Chicago last year because of the city’s location and strong culinary tradition.
Zurich-based Callebaut, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-quality cocoa, operates 12 chocolate academies around the world, but Chicago’s is its first in the U.S.
The Academy bolsters Chicago’s thriving premium chocolate landscape, which this decade has sprouted dozens of boutique chocolate shops and lounges that pride themselves on high-quality ingredients and creative concoctions. Local artisans like Vosge Haut-Chocolat, which offers curry- and wasabi-infused chocolate, and Coco Rouge, which adds bacon to its exotic chocolate mix, have risen alongside chains like Ethels.
For chocophiles like 27-year-old Michelle LaNoue, who likes to experiment with exotic combinations, the gourmet explosion is an exciting departure from some store chocolates that can “taste almost like a wax.”
LaNoue, who lives in Plainfield, knows a good chocolate when “you can taste more than two ingredients. You’re trying to figure out what’s in it.”
Interest in premium and dark chocolate has been driving the U.S. chocolate market, which grew 22 percent since 2002 to $16.3 billion last year, according to market research firm Mintel. And people continue to indulge despite the economic gut punch. Chocolate has proven to be relatively recession-proof, according to Mintel.
“People are talking about chocolates now like wines,” said Richard Cusick, an adviser at the Chocolate Academy and formerly the pastry chef at such restaurants as Charlie Trotter’s and Everest. “You might have a chocolate with raspberry flavors, or smoke.”
Premium chocolate accounts for just 15 percent of chocolate sales in traditional markets (not including specialty stores), and just 20 percent of chocolate consumers say they care about cacao percentage, the marker of a premium chocolate, according to a Mintel survey. The survey found M&Ms are the favorite brand. But for those with adventurous palates, Chicago is a playground.
Valerie Beck, who founded Chicago Chocolate Tours three years ago, organizes about 10 tours a week to some of her favorite chocolate shops in the city ($40 per person).
“I choose the ones where, when I take a bite, I’m transported,” said Beck, a petite, giggly woman who gave up a career as a lawyer to pursue her chocolate dreams. “It’s like an uplifted feeling of happiness.”
RedEye tagged along on a Sunday afternoon tour of Gold Coast chocolate shops with a dozen women (about 90 percent of the people who go on the chocolate tours are women, Beck says). The tour started at the flower-filled Teuscher shop at 900 N. Michigan Ave., which imports its chocolates fresh from Zurich, and where an 8-ounce box of the signature champagne truffles will set you back $38. It ended at Sarah’s Pastries and Candies, 70 E. Oak St., founded four years ago by 27-year-old Sarah Levy, where the chocolate delights made on-site boast caramelized almonds, roasted pistachios and Rice Krispies.
The diversity of Chicago’s chocolate scene — from European chains to independent artisans — is what makes it “the best chocolate city in the world,” in Beck’s opinion.
“We have this wonderful mix of high and low culture in America that leads to great creativity,” Beck said.
Still, Europe remains at the cutting edge of chocolate experimentation. Jerome Landrieu, an award-winning French pastry chef and a technical adviser at Chicago’s Chocolate Academy, said chocolates filled with avocado and Tabasco sauce are catching on in Paris.
Despite the crazy combinations, chocolate is serious business. The sleek and spotless Academy feels more like a science classroom than Willy Wonka’s factory. Visitors are required to wear a white lab coat and hairnet while touring the state-of-the-art facility.
Chocolate-making is partly a science, after all. Chocolate tastes different depending on where the cocoa bean is grown. It has to be tempered — a process of heating and cooling — to give it the proper shine and “snap.”
But mostly it’s an art, and a reflection of each chocolatier’s passion and personality.
At Bon Bon, a chocolate boutique in Andersonville, colorful Day of the Dead skulls, Buddha-shaped bon bons and chocolate bars molded with Kama Sutra patterns are sold in a dimly lit space decorated with a chandelier bearing sphinx heads, a palmistry hand model and a Ouija board.
Owner Elizabeth Hulme-Zuverink, who said her former jobs titles include “ghost investigator” and “Russian Gypsy Card reader,” makes all of the chocolates by hand with her daughter, 23-year-old Madison Zuverink. She remembers her pastry teachers telling her a chocolate shop alone could never survive when she opened it in 2002. It was a struggle at first, but business has been improving every year with the explosion in interest in premium chocolate.
“This shop really reflects what one person can do when they pour themselves into something,” Madison Zuverink said.
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Know your chocolate
Chocolate is, at its core, a mixture of sugar, cocoa butter and chocolate liquor, which refers to all the substance extracted from the cocoa bean (it doesn’t contain alcohol).
Cocoa butter is the fatty part of the cocoa bean (it’s not dairy), and it is a crucial component of chocolate. In the U.S., chocolate cannot contain any fats or oils that are not cocoa butter. If it does, it cannot legally be called chocolate.
To cut costs, some manufacturers are substituting cocoa butter with vegetable oil. Market leader Hershey’s has announced it will do so, though it says 85 percent of its product lineup will remain 100 percent cocoa butter (including Hershey’s Kisses and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups). Look for labeling that says “chocolate-flavored” or “chocolate-like” to see whether it’s pure.
DARK CHOCOLATE: Contains cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, sugar and vanilla. The proportions of the ingredients determine whether it’s bitter, semi-sweet or sweet.
MILK CHOCOLATE: Contains cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, sugar, vanilla and milk or milk powder.
WHITE CHOCOLATE: Contains sugar, cocoa butter, milk and vanilla. It doesn’t contain any cocoa powder, so some say it’s not really chocolate.
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Sweet knowledge
Did you know …
– Chicago is the nation’s candy capital, measured by the number of people employed in the candy-making business. That still holds true even though many candy factories have moved out in the past decade. When it comes to chocolate-making specifically, however, Chicago is beat out by Harrisburg, Pa., home of Hershey.
– 70 percent of the world’s cocoa crop comes from Africa, most of it from the Ivory Coast.
– 3.6 billion pounds of chocolate candy were consumed in the U.S. in 2007. That’s 12 pounds per person.
– The U.S. is 12th in the world in per capita chocolate consumption. The top three are Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Germany.
– Cocoa cultivation has been traced back to the Olmec civilization (1500-400 B.C.), in what is now Honduras. Later, the Mayans and Aztecs used cacao beans as currency and made chocolate into a hot, spicy drink reserved for warriors, nobility and priests.
– 67 percent of people who buy chocolate for themselves do it because they have a chocolate craving.
– Chocolate melts at around body temperature.
– The chocolate smell from the Blommer Chocolate Co. factory that occasionally hangs over Chicago is a result of choco-pollution. The EPA cited Blommer in 2005 for releasing too much cocoa dust in the air when grinding cocoa beans.
– Dark chocolate can be healthy for your heart. It contains high levels of flavanoids, antioxidants that can help reduce bad cholesterol and improve blood flow to lower blood pressure.
– Chocolate does not contain much caffeine. The average serving of milk chocolate has less than a cup of decaf coffee. But chocolate does contain theobromine, which is a stimulant.
– Chocolate has not been proven to be an aphrodisiac. Chocolate contains tryptophan, which is a building block of serotonin, and phenylethylamine, a chemical released when people fall in love. But the amounts in chocolate are too small to have any measurable effect on desire, researchers say.
Sources: Center for Labor and Community Relations; World Cocoa Foundation; National Confectioners Association; Mintel; Cleveland Clinic; news reports
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aelejalderuiz@tribune.com
