Pierre Marcolini: haute chocolate arrives in London

Pierre Marcolini is the world’s first ‘haute chocolatier’ and the fashion set’s Cocoa Chanel. As he opens his first boutique (that’s right) in London, Richard Godwin heads to Belgium to talk craftsmanship, confectionery and making petits fours for Kylie Minogue
Richard Godwin3 July 2015

Pierre Marcolini’s factory in the faubourgs of Brussels may not be much to look at, but, my God, the smell. A deep, rich, almost trans-cendental chocolate fug hangs over the place. Close your eyes and you are not in an industrial unit in Belgium, but Ecuador or Madagascar or Indonesia or any of the cocoa plantations represented in Marcolini’s bean library. Or perhaps even some Willy Wonka-inspired dream from childhood.

Inside, Marcolini himself — the most fashionable chocolatier in the world’s most celebrated chocolate-producing nation — is sauntering around the rooms, pausing to taste his creations. He eats 200g of chocolate a day (more than 1,000 calories worth) and says he could happily lunch on sugar alone. It doesn’t show: at 50, he’s so nimble and serene and fresh-faced, you wonder whether there’s something in all that cocoa butter. He looks in on his ‘head of praline’ as she unwraps pistachios from Iran, so green they’re like emeralds. In another room, a pastry chef is sandwiching together rose-flavoured macarons (the secret to perfect ones, apparently, is to freeze the shells overnight). In yet another, passion fruit hearts pop out of a machine as white chocolate ganache oozes below. ‘Délectable,’ says Marcolini, taking a second one.

Now Londoners can breathe this all in at Marcolini’s first British boutique, which opened in May in Marylebone (or ‘Marie la Beaune’ as he calls it). He’s already a favourite with the fashion set; he calls himself an ‘haute couture’ chocolatier and is often seen at Paris Fashion Week with his très chic art collector wife Valérie. He recently collaborated with the hip Japanese label Maison Kitsuné on a chocolate bento box and issues seasonal collections himself, including spectacular dodecahedron eggs for Easter and a fresh fruit chocolate designed to be eaten straight from the fridge. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Diane Kruger are repeat clients in Paris, while Kylie Minogue has gone into raptures over his Sans Sucre sugar-free bars. In France, he’s a household name as a judge on their version of MasterChef.

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What Marcolini has managed to do is ally the innovations of the new-wave ‘bean-to-bar’ movement in chocolate with the best French and Belgian pâtisserie traditions, which are, as he says, ‘dans mes tripes’ (in my guts). He was born in Charleroi and grew up on the outskirts of Brussels with his mother. He never knew his father; the name Marcolini is his mother’s, who comes from Verona in Italy. ‘When I was born, my father didn't come to the birth,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know him. I’ve never even seen a picture of him. When I asked my mum about him, she’d say: “Look in the mirror and you’ll see him.” ’ Did that affect his outlook? ‘I don’t think so. Well, it meant that I had to make my own way in life.’ He says his mother is a ‘catastrophe’ in the kitchen and didn’t understand his dream to become a chocolatier-pâtissier. ‘Like all mothers, Italian, Belgian, whatever, she wanted her children to become a doctor or a lawyer. But I loved to work with my hands and I have such a sweet tooth.’

The way he describes his childhood memories it sounds as if it would be hard for that not to be the case. ‘In Belgium, we always had these grand chocolate companies, like Godiva or Côte d’Or. The Côte d’Or factory used to be right outside the Gare du Midi so, when you arrived in Brussels, you stepped off the train and had this extraordinary smell. All Belgian children go on tours of chocolate factories. I was desperate to understand it all. And when I arrived at pâtisserie school, I said to myself: “I’m going to be at home here.” ’

Pierre Marcolini's new London flagship store - in pictures

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He tells me he was ‘kind of arrogant’ when he started out. His first job was at a then cele-brated chocolatier in Brussels; he says he was appalled to discover his new employer used powdered vanilla and ‘rubbish butter’. ‘After a couple of weeks, he asked me if I was happy in the job. I said no. “What is it, the hours? The pay?” I replied: “No, it’s the quality of the product.” ’ He was sacked. The old chocolatier is now out of business. Marcolini is pleased to tell me that he now gets through one tonne of Madagascan vanilla pods each year.

For all his success — the company employs 350 people and has a £25m turnover — the way he describes it, getting people to eat better chocolate isn’t straightforward. The Belgians treat their chocolate the same way the French treat, well, most things: traditions aren’t questioned even when they lead to stasis.

Mr Bean: Pierre Marcolini. (Picture: Pal Hansen).

Belgium became the centre of chocolate-making as a new, industrial country in the late 19th century, but Marcolini believes the national industry has been in decline since the Second World War, as chocolate shifted from a luxury to a mass-market product. He’s far too diplomatic to be rude about mainstream competitors, but I sense he doesn’t really see it as chocolate; he is more concerned about the decline in native traditions. ‘I think we have lost our craft,’ he says. ‘At the beginning of the 20th century, all the chocolate-makers in Belgium made their own chocolate — you can see them in the old photos.’ A chocolatier was originally someone who manufactured chocolate, he explains, but the definition has shifted to someone who makes chocolates. They usually do this by buying a semi-finished chocolate product from the same wholesalers, then filling it with their own creams and ganaches, something Marcolini likens to a restaurant buying a tin of minestrone soup, lobbing in a few herbs and claiming it as their own. ‘If you go to the square in Sablon [the Bond Street of Brussels], there are ten chocolatiers who are all working with the same product! There’s no signature.’

He credits upstart chocolate-makers in places such as America, Britain and Scandinavia with changing the philosophy — ‘c’est une vraie révolution!’ — citing the Mast Brothers (the Brooklyn hipsters who have just opened up on Redchurch Street) and Bertil Åkesson (whose London shop is just off Portobello Road), who are as obsessive about their single-estate Vietnamese sea salt chocolate as coffee geeks are about their flat whites. ‘In countries where you don’t have so much heritage, it’s much easier to change the way you do things. It was Ferran Adrià who created the revolution with molecular gastronomy; if he had been French, as opposed to Spanish, it wouldn’t have been possible.’

Astonishingly, Marcolini is still one of the few advocates of the ‘bean-to-bar’ approach in Belgium, but it is something he cares passionately about: establishing direct links with his plantations as opposed to relying on whole-salers, and making all the chocolate from scratch with a wine-like emphasis on soil and climate. He finds it amusing that, up until now, the main way we have judged the quality of chocolate is the percentage of cocoa. ‘It’s as ridiculous as judging wine on the quantity of alcohol. Is it Cabernet? Is it Merlot? Cocoa is just the same. It’s about terroir, agriculture, sun, environment.’ He values his links with his producers highly. While the trade is generally controlled by national monopolies, with farmers paid less than subsistence wages, he insists on paying his farmers at least 25 per cent above the market rate. ‘That way you start having a community of people who are happy to work with you.’ And, of course, you can be sure you’re using the best ingredients. Before I go, he gets out a bag of Madagascan vanilla pods for me to inhale. ‘You see?’ he says. If only all revolutions smelled so good.

Pierre Marcolini, 37 Marylebone High Street, W1 (020 7486 7196; marcolini.com) .Portraits by Pål Hansen.

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