Madame Chocolatier

The path to Sweet Paradise Chocolatier has taken owner Melanie Boudar halfway round the world.

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Paradise Chocolatier
Boudar filed that amazing chocolate experience away, and returned to her life as a gem buyer and jewelry designer. Then one day, on a whim, she answered an ad for a job as a gemologist on O‘ahu. Within weeks, she had moved to the Islands.

“I eventually moved to the Big Island, bought a piece of property and built a bed and breakfast. Searching for an amenity for guests, I thought, gosh, it would be so nice to have chocolates like I had in Belgium! The only way to get them was to make them myself.”

The perfectionist started dabbling in the kitchen, and became taken with the study of chocolate. She pursued professional training, studying in Vancouver at the École Chocolate, and in Chicago under the tutelage of world-famous chocolatier Barry Callebaut at the Chocolate Academy. From there, she enrolled in the Artisan Chocolate and Confection Program of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

Not satisfied with a merely technical aptitude for chocolate, Boudar journeyed into the cloud forests of Venezuela, where the gôut de terroir (literally, “taste of the earth”) produces the best cacao in the world. “There is a particular, remote plantation called Chuao. To get there you take a boat for forty-five minutes, then hike three miles up a dirt road.” Harvesting the noble Criollo beans, trucking them to harbor, loading them on boats, is still painstakingly done by hand, which is partly what makes the beans so expensive.

“The entire village of Chuao is into chocolate,” says Boudar. “They dry beans on the concrete steps in front of the church. Every little café has a chocolate specialty. The plantation town is adorable, near a beautiful forest with 100-foot bukura trees, beneath which cacao thrives.”

Revered by ancient Mayan and Aztecs, cacao is mentioned in various creation stories…and was offered as gifts to the gods.

Cacao originated in Latin America, where it was revered by ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations. Religious ceremonies revolved around the planting and harvesting of this wondrous substance. The bean is mentioned in various creation stories, and was offered as gifts to the gods and deceased dignitaries. Both civilizations used cacao beans as currency long before the conquistadors arrived on American shores. Words like nocacau (my money) or mocacau (your money) were part of the vernacular in those cultures. When Cortez failed to find gold in the New World, he banked on the value of cacao instead. Today, chocolate is celebrated throughout the world. In places like Chuao, Venezuela, it’s still a way of life.

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