Every Monday you can find a red haired man with an impeccable apron and a great smile in a posh shop at 20 Royal Exchange in London. The man is Paul A. Young and the shop sells chocolate. More precisely, Mr. Young sells his own chocolate, made with his two hands everyday in the kitchen of the said store.
Its windows are so narrow, you may just miss it when you pass by, thinking it was an optical illusion, as the white façade blends in with the rest of the building. But at a careful inspection, the display will give its intents and purposes away. On a duvet of white chocolate chips lay two towers of silvery boxes wrapped in golden ribbons. Snowflake-y white truffles are spread here and there in a casual and it looks like they want to reach for the sky. Or maybe that’s just the incessant, subliminal Christmas marketing messages at work in my head and they just want to reach the top. Just like their maker.
Paul A Young has not shied away from work since he was 16, when he started his long-winding, but rewarding road to kitchen success. Having undergone the test of fire of working for great chefs like Marco Pierre White, he managed to advance through the ranks of pastry-dom and finally took off as a full-time chocolate maker in 2006. My attempts to dig for childhood experiences that led him to this delicious niche in his profession only discover that as a child, Paul did not eat many sweets. But there’s absolutely nothing Freudian about it, because, like he says about everything, "it just happened" that he fell into chocolate. After a few of these happenings (the logo of cream swirls in a purple inset just happened, as well as the shape of each truffle), it becomes clear that Paul’s journey has the sort of instinctive compass that points him to the right direction and that many of us wish we had.
He started making chocolate in his kitchen at home with Valrhona because "a chef should never compromise on the quality of his ingredients even when he’s just experimenting, otherwise the product will never be as good as it could be." He suddenly seems very passionate when talking about the quality of food and you can’t tell he will have nothing but the best. So he was commissioned to create chocolates for Fortnum & Mason and Harvey Nichols (two of London’s most respected luxury department stores) at the very beginning and thus enhanced his skills and knowledge until he got to the point where he had to open his shop, the first of which (there are two) came to life in April 2006 in Camden Passage, a lovely offbeat street in a hip neighborhood. Now he splits his time between the two shops, each having a kitchen on the premises – better said under the premises - where the chocolate is freshly made each day.
Now that Amedei has become one of the best chocolate producers in the world, Paul started using them for couvertures alongside the good old Valrhona. His preferences are sitting high and mighty on the shelves side by side with his own merchandise. Amedei and Valrhona bars, although in different corners of the shop, stand out amidst the purple - brown regimented order. Everything is spick-and-span and the store has an eerie combination of new – the shapes, the fonts, the materials – and of old – the high ceiling room with two rather modern chandeliers, the very tall wood shelves with mirrors behind each and every single one. You could almost smell old wood, but all that you can catch in the air is the scent of fresh chocolate. The only non-prepackaged products are the truffles that are waiting patiently to be picked form the wooden trays on the left hand side, right before the cashier.
Speaking of chocolate, the Christmas collection is mostly liquor-based and it’s got some mad combinations. I have not tried the sloe gin, the leffe brun beer, nor the marmite ganache, but the ones that did reach my tasting buds have imploded in a bouquet of chocolate that is the strong and silent type. You know, the one you’d like to marry. My favorite, so unusual and inventive, was the "Three mages’ gifts" (as I called it) bar because it has gold foil, myrrh and frankincense and it tastes very saintly. The holiday cake with spices was also very rich and enticing. Just in case you are not convinced by the look and cannot grasp the extent of their tastiness, there are samples in silvery mini chalices. Just say yes. Happen a yes.
