We buy our chocolate from Barry Callebaut, and we do not buy anything pre-mixed. Those two facts together explain more about how this kitchen runs than any single recipe would, and they are the reason a chocolate cake here tastes different from a chocolate cake somewhere with a lower ingredients bill.
Naming a supplier commits you. Once the name is printed you have to keep buying it, in every batch, whatever the invoice says. That is the point of putting it on our suppliers page alongside Heilala Vanilla and the local dairy we use.
Why we select for taste and not for cost
One of the five things Dhi Ferrari says about this business is that we select for taste, not cost, and partner with the best. It sounds like a slogan until you look at what it rules out. It rules out the compound coatings that set hard and taste waxy. It rules out buying whatever is cheapest and adjusting the recipe around it, and it rules out sweetening your way past a dull base, which is the usual fix.
The related value is about sweetness: we focus on flavour instead, and invite people to try. Good chocolate carries bitterness, acidity and length on its own, so the sugar has a job other than covering something up.
What no pre-mix actually means
No pre-mix means the ganache is made here from chocolate and cream, not reconstituted from a powder. It means the mousse is built rather than whipped out of a sachet. It means the chocolate has to be tempered by hand, taken up and brought back down through a controlled set of temperatures so the cocoa butter crystallises evenly and the finished piece has snap and shine instead of a dull, streaked surface.
Dhi spent more than eighteen years in patisserie before this, trained at French and Italian culinary schools, and worked as head chocolatier for She Universe Chocolates. That background is worth reading in full, but the short version is that the tempering is not outsourced.
Where you can taste it
The clearest examples sit in the layer cake range. The Thunder Chocolate Cake is built around brigadeiro, the traditional Brazilian chocolate milk caramel, which turns fudgy and dense against the sponge. The Dulce Caramel runs dulce de leche between chocolate layers under a dark ganache, and the Nutella Cake stacks hazelnut against cocoa.
In the cabinet, the Ferrari Rocher is a flourless chocolate and hazelnut cake under a crisp shell of dark chocolate and roasted almonds, which is where tempering shows itself most obviously. The Black and White mousse sits on a flourless brownie base, and Brownie Bites come by the bag from the same flourless recipe.
Two things said plainly. The Snickers Mini Cake contains peanuts, and we do not make claims about the absence of nuts in anything we produce. And while several of these are made with no added gluten, our kitchen is small and without exclusive production areas for all of our different recipes, so traces may occur and nothing is guaranteed safe for severe coeliac disease.
The chocolate you drink, and the one you share
Our hot chocolate starts at $5 and is made with dark Belgian chocolate, served New York style with a toasted marshmallow rim or Paris style with whipped cream on the side. The Dark Chocolate Thickshake blends the same chocolate through vanilla ice cream, and most of our hot and cold drinks offer an alternative milk with no added dairy.
The one to come in for with another person is the Signature Chocolate Fondue: a warm Belgian chocolate dip with house-toasted marshmallow, a mini croissant, cookies, brownie bites and fresh fruit. It is designed to sit in the middle of a table with two forks in it, and ordering it alone rather misses the point. It belongs to our made-to-order dessert menu, plated at the counter while you wait.
Ordering and visiting
Cabinet chocolate and drinks need no notice at all, and made-to-order desserts such as the fondue take about ten minutes in store. Anything you want ordered ahead runs on a two-day lead time for most of the range, three days for the larger desserts and seven for petit fours, with a checkout date picker that only offers dates the kitchen can meet.
Collection only, from our patisserie inside The Welder at 20-26 Welles Street, Christchurch Central. We are open 10am to 6pm Tuesday to Friday and 10am to 3pm Saturday. If you want somewhere to start, our round-up of chocolate desserts in Christchurch and our piece on chocolate cookies both cover more of the range.
