Belgian chocolate: Dominique Persoone is one of the best chocolatiers in the world.

The chocoholic

By THOMAS GUTSCHKER (text) and FRANK RÖTH (photos)

May 26, 2023 · Dominique Persoone is one of the best chocolatiers in the world. The Belgian not only makes children dream – he also opens up completely new worlds of taste.

When was it when he was first mentioned in the Michelin Guide? Dominique Persoone thinks for a moment and then unbuttons his shirt. On the left breast, the image of a cacao pod appears. "That was my first tattoo, I got it in 2003." To celebrate this success: when his business was included in the "Michelin Guide". After that, more and more tattoos were added, now there are 15. Each has its own story. "Chocolate is Rock'n'Roll" is written on his right upper arm, with the red tongue of the Rolling Stones sticking out in between. This is probably the craziest story, more on that later. Now he is pushing a local newspaper across the table, a special edition that he designed himself. For this, he had himself photographed half-naked, so that all tattoos are clearly visible.

"Chocolate is Rock'n'Roll": Dominique Persoone likes to pose – and also knows how to present his products.

To call Dominique Persoone an eccentric is almost an understatement. He loves to pose, be photographed and filmed. For the cover of the "Krant van West-Vlaanderen" he had himself completely dusted with cocoa. He doesn't want to be a normal chocolatier. Persoone prefers to call himself "Shock-o-latier". He has a cooking show and stars on reality television shows. He has just returned from filming a new series in which he works as a nurse. Why is he doing this, it really has nothing to do with his profession? "It's eye-opening," he replies, what a hard job it is, working night shifts, taking care of emergencies. "And, to be honest, I've seen a lot of accidents in the kitchen."

"For me, chocolate is something fairytale and romantic."

Dominique Persoone, "Shock-o-latier"

So this is Dominique Persoone, 54 years old, almost no hair left, his stubble beard graying, boyish smile. Along with Pierre Marcolini, he is the best-known and, according to "Gault Millau", currently the best chocolatier in Belgium. When it comes to chocolate, Belgium is not a province, but the Champions League. In Bruges alone, where Persoone lives and where he opened his first shop a good 30 years ago, there are more than 60 shops selling chocolate. During the Corona pandemic, they were allowed to remain open, Belgium considered chocolate to be a vital food. He considers most of these shops to be tourist traps. On the other hand, he has chocolates that are also served in Michelin-starred restaurants. Persoone collaborates with celebrity chefs, the Dutchman Sergio Herman, the Brazilian Alex Atala and the Dane René Redzepi from the famous "Noma".

Window dressing at "The Chocolat Line" in Bruges

Staging is also part of his creations. Typical Parisian chocolates are inconspicuously square, as if made in a typesetting box, with a few speckles on top so that you can tell them apart. At Persoone, on the other hand, every chocolate looks different: sometimes like an Inca mask, then like a skull, with the likeness of Che Guevara or a pink pig on it, painted bright yellow or bright orange. "For me, chocolate is something fairytale and romantic," he says. "As a true chocolatier, it's your duty to make children dream." That's why every six weeks he puts something special in the shop window, where children stop immediately when they are pulled through the city by their parents.

At Dominique Persoone, every praline looks different. He considers it his duty to "make children dream".

But you don't end up in the guide for gourmets yet. What Persoone is really famous for is the flavor variations he invented. There's the "Miss Piggy" with almonds, crispy bacon and caramelized ciccioli, after which you only want to eat bacon and chocolate. Or the "Red Earth", filled with a puree of beetroot and a hazelnut praline. And, of course, the elegantly curved "Sakura", for which Persoone imports cherry blossoms from Japan and processes them into a caramel. "The ingredients always have to be fresh," he says. "And you have to find the right balance so that every aroma comes into its own instead of being outshone by others."

What is the strawberry pea praline?

The unusual combinations are a result of molecular cuisine, which breaks down ingredients into their biochemical components and reassembles them. Persoone is friends with Bernard Lahousse, a bio-engineer from Ghent. Lahousse develops new flavors by combining ingredients that have molecular similarities: kiwi and oysters, strawberries and peas, or chocolate and bacon. In the beginning, Persoone says, he was guided by this, but now it is intuition. He has a kind of database for flavors in his head and brings them into contact with each other. While others remember images, he remembers smells and tastes. How his grandmother's bread tasted or his mother's stew tasted, he can still describe exactly today.

He came into contact with professional cooking at an early age. His father was the director of a casino in Middelkerke, on the Belgian North Sea coast. He didn't have much time for his son, his parents were divorced. So he took him to work on weekends and holidays. There was a Michelin-starred restaurant in the casino, where Dominique helped in the kitchen, peeled potatoes, cleaned vegetables, opened scallops. For the boy, 14 years old, it was an initiation experience. He watched the chefs and marveled at what they conjured up from the ingredients. When school was over, his father sent him to a cooking school. And then to Paris, "for proper training".

"At first I thought it was boring, chocolate was old school for me."

He worked for Michelin-starred chef Lucas Carton and pastry chef Pierre Hermé. It was hard work, he remembers, 14 to 16 hours a day, six days a week. On the seventh day, he went to the laundromat to clean his work clothes. For the pâtisseries, he had to start at two o'clock in the morning. At the very end, the chocolate was made. "At first I thought it was boring, chocolate was old school for me." But then he learned how to handle, shape and process this fabric. "That was a real trigger, suddenly I thought chocolate was cool."

So it happened that in 1992, when he was back in Belgium and had completed his military service, he opened his own shop: "The Chocolate Line". To this day, his wife takes care of everything business. She is the CEO, he says, who doesn't even want to have a clue about numbers. "I'm the worst businessman in the world, I don't even have a business plan. Everything I do, I decide from my gut." However, this was quite successful. Persoone has almost 50 employees, in his factory in Bruges and in his two stores, there and in Antwerp, where he moved into a palace on the Meir shopping street during the Corona pandemic, which had once belonged to Napoleon. He also has a chocolate factory in Congo and a plantation of cocoa trees in Mexico.

Persoone has almost 50 employees, a factory and two branches in Belgium, a factory in Congo and a plantation in Mexico.

The plantation is reminiscent of a tattoo on his right forearm. In early 2007, he traveled to the Central American country with friends. They went on an expedition, and he had big plans: "I wanted to find the original, pure cocoa, 100 percent Criollo, which everyone said no longer existed." The variety was delicate, susceptible to disease, small beans, low yields – so it was supplanted by other variants. So where to look for it? Persoone found that the Mayans had sacrificed cocoa to the gods in sacred, well-protected places: in craters on the Yucatan Peninsula that had once been formed as a result of a massive meteorite impact. They rode horseback from crater to crater until they actually found a cacao tree bearing fruit. This was Criollo Caramelo, a rare and original variety.

"I wanted to find the original, pure cocoa, 100 percent Criollo, which everyone said no longer existed."

On a later trip, Persoone met a cocoa farmer who was still growing this variety. He toyed with the idea of buying the plantation. But then the husband died, his children quarreled over their inheritance, the dream was shattered. During a long night with lots of tequilas, he says, he decided to start his own plantation. He acquired four hectares of land on which 4000 cocoa trees grow, including three old varieties of Criollo. Each tree bears about 20 fruits a year. If you roast their beans, it doesn't yield much more than a kilogram of brown gold. Six employees work there. "You don't do that for money reasons," he says. "This is only for freaks."

In the showroom of "The Chocolat Line" in Bruges

For freaks, there is also the strange plexiglass apparatus that stands in a showcase of his office. "This catapults cocoa powder into your nose," he explains. Excuse me, in the nose? Yes! Now is the opportunity for the story with the Rolling Stones. In 2007, the band had settled on the Belgian coast for a few weeks. During this time, their guitarist Ron Wood turned 60. The next day it was Charlie Watts' birthday, the drummer. Their wives organized a feast, and Persoone was hired for dessert. That's when he came up with the crazy idea of the "Chocolate Shooter" – he knew that the gentlemen had already pulled all sorts of things through their noses. The model was an apparatus with which his father had snorted tobacco.

It became the best advertisement for Dominique Persoone he could wish for. The next day, Mick Jagger was asked by an interviewer how the evening had gone. Really good, he is said to have replied, we snorted chocolate! Of course, he also mentioned the store that came up with this. A line of chocolate, that just fit too well. Actually, it was supposed to be just a joke. But in the meantime, the "Shock-o-Latier" has sold more than 25,000 of these devices all over the world.

Defying the clichés Portrait of Albrecht Schuch Salone del Mobile I Tedeschi