Soon Easter! This is the opportunity to meet one of the rare craftsmen to ensure the entire manufacturing process, from the cocoa bean to the gourmet egg.
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| This Peugeot 203 of the 1950s was converted into a mobile foam bar. |
It's a tiled shop that looks like it came out of a Tim Burton film, where, in the middle of the cocoa scent, the raw wood furniture rubs shoulders with an old machine that roasts the precious beans. A wall covered with shelves surmounts glass bells housing each of the cocoa fragments, whose bewitching scent we are invited to smell. Patrice Chapon is an explorer of taste.
Since 1986, he has been travelling the world in search of the small producers that he has found in the heart of the Brazilian forests or at the bottom of the Sambirano valley in Madagascar, populated by mygales and royal pythons: "These are hacienda cocoa, which I buy very expensive, to convince producers not to sell them to the cocoa industry.
I look at the beans after they dry and check that they are perfect, of a beautiful color. Then, I roast them in Chelles, near Paris, before proceeding to the conching (which lasts twenty-four hours and whose goal is to remove acidity)".
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| In his moss bar, in Paris, Patrice Chapon serving a chocolate mousse. |
Chapon is the only chocolate maker who does not use soya lecithin or cocoa butter. His passion is pure, concentrated, intense cocoa, a blessing of nature, rich in vitamins and minerals and free of any chemicals during its agriculture. Its cocoa trees grow in an almost virgin environment, between mango, eucalyptus, banana, hibiscus and vanilla trees, which communicate their perfumes to cocoa.
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| Milk chocolate and dark chocolate egg garnished with caramelized cashew nuts, filled with fries and mini-Easter eggs, 35 €.© Philippe Petit / Paris Match |
In his shop, he has created a chocolate mousse bar that reconciles us with this dessert often too sweet. Each was made from a unique terroir cocoa: Ecuador (rose petal notes), Madagascar (cherry aromas), Venezuela (100% sugar-free cocoa: an explosion of dried fruits!), Peru (blackberry, ginger) and Ghana (spicy and intense nutmeg taste). Thus it is possible to appreciate the taste and the quintessence of each of these particular vintages. Enthusiastic, the Queen of England made Patrice Chapon her ice cream maker for chocolate ice cream...
Mosses are served here in cones or 100 gram (6.20 €) jars. Besides cocoa, Chapon uses only organic eggs and good cane sugar, no vanilla, no preservatives, no orange peel, he is also the first craftsman to use the cocoa pulp that covers the bean and is necessary for its fermentation. From this pulp he makes sorbets and drinks with the incredible taste of lychee.
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