On a hot weekday afternoon, this reporter steps inside the newest chocolate spot in New Westminster, with an excitement akin to what Charlie would have felt walking into Willy Wonka’s factory.
Unlike in Roald Dahl’s fiction, there aren't oompa loompas or a river of chocolate here; instead, shelves explode with chocolate bars sourced from around the globe and a sizable kitchen houses sacks of cocoa beans that are to be turned into velvety candies.
The Origins Chocolate Bar and Cocoaro Craft Chocolate kitchen mashup is the hot new place for all things chocolate in town.
Bite-sized chunks of dark chocolate from Cuba and vegan milk chocolate from Ecuador are laid out for customers to sample in the cool interior of the brand-new store.
A small menu board features "iced hot chocolate" — a beverage that the chocolate shop wasn’t able to offer its customers at its previous River Market location, as founders Katey Wright and Peter Jorgensen told the Record in an interview.
The melted chocolate — a delicious antidote to sizzling summer — comes in a plastic cup with clinking ice cubes.
With a big slurp of the cool drink, this reporter makes her way past the retail space into the Cocoaro kitchen, where founder Margaret Inoue is busy making a batch of oatmeal cookies (a mix of brown sugar, oats and cocoa butter).
Inoue's award-winning chocolates (they won two silver prizes at the International Chocolate Awards World Finals last year) have been part of Origins Chocolate Bar for a while.
But now, New Westies can do more than just grab a bar hand-made by Inoue, but also learn all about the journey of a bean to a bar from the chocolate-maker herself.
A place to learn the origin of chocolate
Around the same time last year when Origins Bar Chocolate decided to move out of River Market, Inoue was looking for a new space as well, says Wright.
Sharing a space with a focus on chocolates seemed like a win-win for both parties.
“Since this unit was a concrete shell when we leased it (almost exactly a year ago!), we were able to create a purpose-built chocolate-making kitchen to Margaret’s requirements, and it’s amazing to coexist in one place together in such a mutually beneficial way,” Wright says in an email.
“Not only does it make it possible for both Origins and Cocoaro to afford this big step, it’s a pretty great feeling to smell cocoa beans roasting when we come into the shop,” she adds.
So far, the response to the new chocolate retail and kitchen has been “overwhelmingly positive,” says Wright.
While Origins plans to offer chocolate tasting sessions at the store, Inoue wants to educate people on where their chocolate comes from.
Not many know that when you grind cocoa beans, you get a "beautiful liquid" and not a powder; or that tempering chocolate is like tempering steel — a long circuitous process of heating and cooling, says Inoue.
“It’s engineering — but in the kitchen.”
Origins Chocolate Bar is a two-minute walk from the Columbia SkyTrain station, at 538 Victoria St.
