A Closer Look at Some of the Best Canadian Chocolatiers
If you are looking for unusual chocolate flavours and designs from local chocolatiers, try one of these from our list below.
Toronto Chocolatier David Chow
Chow’s methodological precision meets a dedication to quality ingredients to create his products’ allure. His chocolates not only provide the sensory ideals of snap, crunch, chew, and melt but also come in gorgeous flavours. His Buckwheat Fennel Bar, a slab of blond chocolate studded with Ontario buckwheat honey sponge toffee, caramelized buckwheat groats, fennel pollen, and Maldon sea salt, won the International Chocolate Awards in 2016. “It tastes like fennel butterscotch and has the crunch that I crave,” he says.
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In 1941, Montreal’s Madeleine Daigneault and her sister Juliette Farand opened Chocolats Andrée. The tiny storefront and chocolatier on Avenue du Parc provided a way for the sisters to support themselves and fellow women, staffing their shop entirely with those left behind by their conscripted breadwinner menfolk at the onset of the Second World War.
“My grandmother told me, in those days, women working wasn’t something that was common or very popular,” says Stéphanie Saint-Denis, Daigneault’s granddaughter, who represents the third generation of women helming Chocolats Andrée. The shop’s name was chosen for its gender ambiguity when spoken, but perhaps the sisters needn’t have been so concerned about raising eyebrows with their all-woman staff. Welcomed by residents of the nearby Outremont and Mile-End neighbourhoods, today Chocolats Andrée stands as a Montreal culinary institution alongside such household names Schwartz’s, Moishes, and St-Viateur.
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The red door of Chocolate Tofino stands out in the gravel mini outdoor Tofino-style mall, and the smell is intoxicating as you enter the shop, where a group of seven work in a 250-square-foot space. The owners and the team produce an astonishing quality and quantity of chocolate: wild blackberry buttercream, hazelnut rainforest crispy log, salted caramel, maple syrup vanilla bean caramel, La Maya truffle with organic chilies. And as if chocolate weren’t enough, the house-made gelatos (exceptionally good lavender and wildflower honey) and sorbets inspire surfers to hang ten. (Power outages occur frequently in Tofino, so gelato is half price when the power is out.)
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Quebec’s Bean-to-Bar Chocolate Community Turns the Industry Inside-Out by Thinking Fresh & Local
White-walled, breezy, and minimalist, État de Choc, on Montreal’s Boulevard Saint-Laurent Boulevard near Little Italy, is a “metaphorical adoptive country for everyone who loves chocolate.” This homey phrase is the vision behind État de Choc, a bean-to-bar chocolate maker/purveyor that opened its doors in 2018.
It’s where a quiet, chocolatey revolution of sorts has been gaining momentum since owner Maud Gaudreau’s revelation. She decided to use 90-95 per cent locally made bean-to-bar chocolate in her creations, sourced from Quebec-based producers. She set out to change the way people think about chocolate—and she may be succeeding.
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The New Addition to the Chocolate Family and Where to Find It for Valentine’s Day
Chocolatiers and pastry chefs in Canada have a whole new flavour variation and gorgeous colour to craft in, with the introduction of RB1 couverture—or “the fourth kind of chocolate”: ruby. Ruby, from Zurich-based Barry Callebaut, is the first significant chocolate discovery in 80 years, since the introduction of white chocolate. Naturally pink in colour, it has a light taste profile with refreshing hints of summer berries.
