Today’s chocolate: haute cuisine for the sweet tooth By LYNN WOODS

Today’s chocolate: haute cuisine for the sweet tooth
By LYNN WOODS

Remember when eating chocolate was a guilt-inducing experience? Well, times have changed. Today, it’s not only OK to admit you enjoy the rich-tasting stuff, but eating it can be a way of achieving nirvana.

At least that’s the philosophy of Oliver Kita, who opened Oliver Kita Fine Confections, an artisan chocolate boutique, last November outside the village of Rhinebeck and has since gained a following for raising the chocolate-tasting experience to new heights. His slogan is “Mind-body-chocolate every day,” which relates to that “one moment of bliss” when you savor the complex flavors of a hand-made truffle or cream-filled ganache. “It’s about slowing down and appreciating yourself,” he said.

As you may have guessed, Kita is a marketing wiz, but he’s also a man with a mission, dedicated to improving the world through the craft of chocolate. Originally an executive chef who was trained at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, Kita owned and ran Heaven, a popular restaurant in Woodstock, for a decade before getting an offer to sell he couldn’t refuse.

He decided he wanted to learn the art of chocolate making, which is as complex and refined as the process of making wine, and jetted off to France. Over the course of two years he received diplomas from the top chocolate confectionary schools: L’Ecole Lenotre in Paris and L’Ecole du Grand Chocolat Valrhona in the south of France. Closer to home, he also honed his skills at the Academy du Chocolat, Barry-Callebaut, in Montreal.

He only uses fair-trade chocolate chocolate made from cacao beans that are harvested on farms where the workers make a fair wage which is obtained from two France- and Switzerland-based boutique suppliers. His attention to detail even extends to his packaging, which he said is a crucial part of the experience of buying a luxury product, on a par with perfume: Kita-designed, handsome, square brown boxes adorned with a rococo pattern of scrolled “Os” that are custom made in Rhode Island.

Entering Kita’s shop is like stepping into a boutique off a Parisian street. True to the artisan tradition, it’s where he both sells and makes his wares. Part of the fun for customers is watching him take racks of molded confections out of the refrigerator and grab ribbons from a large armoire to wrap up a gift box.

The walls are a deep vibrant pink and the room is surprisingly spare, in the European style. Small chocolate confections are laid out in neat grids by type molded, truffle, caramel, covered nut, ganache and arranged in two well-lit glass cases.

Each confection is a work of art. Some are dusted in gold leaf, while others are decorated with colorful polka dots, plaids, leopard-skin patterns or other designs that collectively seem to encompass several modern styles of painting. Classic flavors such as Framboise and Escoffier are offered, along with more adventurous confections, such as Opium (a multitiered taste experience containing blood oranges, smoky tea and a fire spice). They range in price from nine pieces for $23 to $80 for a box of 32. Racks containing packages of veneer (Kita’s version of chocolate bark), which start at $6, and molded chocolate bars, starting at $1.50, are located near the door.

Behind the cases is Kita’s work area, where he makes the confections and tests new combinations of flavors as part of the effort to periodically introduce new lines. His biggest single investment was the $30,000 enrober machine, which is used to heat and cool the chocolate so that it develops the crystals for hardening, a consistency required for molds, for example.

One challenge is dealing with seasonal changes, since chocolate is sensitive to temperature and moisture. “If the room isn’t the right temperature, the chocolate doesn’t have the right consistency,” said Kita, nostalgically recalling the carefully controlled environments of the French schools and noting that with spring coming he will have to experiment to make the right adjustments to the room temperature.

Because most people don’t have a clue about chocolate beyond the fact that they like it, Kita takes time to educate his customers about his products, explaining the difference between a ganache and a truffle, finding out what their taste preferences are (or those of their wives; many first-time customers are men buying gifts for their spouses), how much they want to spend and giving them samples to taste.

Kita has introduced a “chocolate of the month” program in which he will automatically send a box of chocolates to the customer’s mother every month a service he planned to promote for Mother’s Day. Holidays are when most of his business occurs. The day before Valentine’s Day, he sold $3,000 worth of chocolate: “People were lined up.” On an average day he will take in about $500 to $600.

Kita’s many contacts in the area from his successful catering business, which he pursues in the summer months, led him to set up shop in Rhinebeck. “I’ve been catering in the area for 10 years at historic sites,” he said. “I know people and frequent a lot of private parties in the area.” Besides having a built-in clientele which he describes as “an older base of people, who are more sophisticated and affluent” Kita also promotes his chocolates through his catering. At a recent Planned Parenthood benefit, for example, he passed out 250 boxes of chocolate.

But he admits such a relatively high-end business would not have been possible five years ago. Even in Woodstock, “while merchants used to sell 200 items at $10, now you have to sell 10 things at $200,” Kita said. Today, “you need money to make the business fly.”

Kita has hired two marketing people and is considering selling his chocolates at two stores, one in the Upper East Side of Manhattan and the other in Sag Harbor on Long Island’s South Fork. While he is enjoying keeping his operation small a refreshing break from the restaurant business, where he was always managing staff he said the chocolate boutique will definitely expand. “There’s a lot of money in the Hudson Valley for economic development,” he said. “I’m planning for it to grow.” But whatever the next step, he will hold to the concept of artisan chocolate made by hand. After all, the whole point is to create that exquisite moment of bliss.

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