Vosges founder’s quest for spice leads to Kauai

Given a choice between choco­late and vanilla when growing up, Katrina Markoff always chose vanilla.

The founder and creator of Chicago-based chocolatier Vosges Haut-Chocolat said, “I didn’t like chocolate as a kid because I didn’t have good chocolate while growing up. Hershey’s tasted like sour milk.”

Her first eureka moment came as a 20-something in Paris, where she happened to try a chocolate-filled beignet. “There was something about the crunchy shell and the chocolate being like a velvety pudding inside.”

As an aspiring chef, Markoff studied at Le Cordon Bleu and, following her graduation, apprenticed alongside Ferran Adria at his famed El Bulli restaurant in Spain before setting off on a nine-month sojourn, working her way through Asia, exploring the culinary traditions of other nations.

“I was eating street food and found myself invited into people’s homes to learn to cook their specialties,” she said. “Thailand was the most influential because the way they eat, each dish represents a different flavor profile. You’re going to have something bitter, something salty, something sweet, and rich or umami. A complete meal has all these flavors.”

Striking a balance in a symphony of flavors is something she sets out to do with Vosges Haut-Chocolate, the company she founded in 1998 after completing her travels and realizing she lacked the proper mindset to be a chef.

“I’m not a linear thinker and not as organized as I needed to be. I thought, ‘Oh no, I’m never gonna make it as a chef.’”

Markoff’s second eureka moment came back home while strolling through a grocery store and noting how U.S. chocolate culture had not evolved since World War II. “They were still selling packaged chocolates with tons of sugar and preservatives. Real chocolate didn’t exist because people didn’t know what it was yet.”

Beyond offering artisanal chocolate, she infused her recipes with such ingredients as Mexican chilies, cinnamon, ginger, black sesame seeds, turmeric, wasabi and bacon.

In time for Valentine’s Day, the chocolatier is bringing her latest creations to Mariposa at Neiman Marcus for a free sampling and signing session Saturday. Among the selections will be a new bar combining matcha and mint; lemon verbena hearts with pink Himalayan salt; and an 80 percent dark chocolate bar with alderwood smoked salt.

A $25 sampling and Krug wine-pairing session with master sommelier Patrick Okubo will follow. Among items to be tasted are a truffle of sweet Indian curry, coconut and 41 percent cacao deep milk chocolate; an olive oil truffle with dried kalamatas; and a new dulce de leche bar with caramel, Celtic sea salt and 45 percent dark milk chocolate.

While in Hawaii, Markoff will also be heading to Kauai Farmacy, a potential source of ginger and turmeric. Last year’s travels included Bulgaria to search for rose oil, and Mexico, where in addition to the chilies that go into her Guajilo and Chipotle super-dark bar, she discovered sal de gusano, or worm salt, a smoky chipotle salt that contains ground worms.

Most people at tastings are open to new combinations and ingredients, such as coconut ash, that they’d never sampled before. “They just go, ‘It’s chocolate, how bad can it be?’ It gives them a thrill to taste something different.”

Her tastings might be compared to a meditation that invites people to slow down and instead of simply swallowing the chocolate, to close their eyes, breathe in deeply and savor the scents and flavors they encounter.

“A lot of people didn’t grow up smelling good things or having a garden,” she said. “The way we use spice, the flavors don’t come all at once, but reveal themselves slowly.”

In the Turmeric Ginger bar, the taste of coconut will likely come before the main ingredients, with black pepper hitting the senses “when it’s already in your stomach,” she said.

In addition to artistry, there’s also science behind the bars. Through her research, Markoff said, she learned that the health benefits of turmeric increase with the presence of black pepper.

The foodie and food-as-medicine movements have pushed her beyond what she could have imagined when she started, she said. “Back then it was so unusual to do flavors with chocolate that we got a lot of attention. Business doubled every year for the first eight years.”

She continues to move forward.

“There’s been an interesting trend with vinegary drinks, and I feel that the next big thing will be bitter drinks,” she said, which goes hand in hand with a trend toward more bitter chocolate that preserves more of the antioxidant health benefits of cacao.

“I watch people when they shop, and they tell me what they’re looking for is dark chocolate — the darker, the better.”