Zagat: Raaka Chocolate Sets Itself Apart with ‘Virgin Chocolate’

James Mulcahy of Zagat went behind the scenes of a bean-to-bar chocolate maker in Red Hook. He filed the following report for NY1.

Raaka Chocolate, which recently took over an industrial warehouse space in Brooklyn, is setting itself apart among candy makers with a unique approach that they have dubbed virgin chocolate.

"So our goal at Raaka is really to make chocolate bars that taste more like cocoa beans,” says Ryan Cheney, founder of Raaka Chocolate. “We do that by cutting out the roasting step. So we're one of the only chocolate makers in the world that doesn't roast cocoa beans. We call our chocolate ‘virgin chocolate’ and really we're successful when you bite into a bar of Raaka and it tastes more like cocoa beans than any chocolate you've ever had."

The young duo who run the chocolate factory relate more to the innovative Brooklyn artisans in this neighborhood than to the classic cliché of a sugar high candy maker.

When we asked head chocolate maker Nate Hodge whether they relate to Willy Wonka, he said, “No, not so much. He's weird, he's a little creepy."

"We chose Brooklyn because we love art, we love the industrial vibe,” Cheney explains. “There's a lot of things made in Red Hook and it feels good to be part of that maker community."

The venue is open to the public for tours and classes and contains a small shop where you can purchase goods to take home. Novices and chocolate geeks will both find a lot to like.

"There are chocolate geeks,” Hodge says. “A chocolate geek is someone that can identify the different flavors of each region in the world, that know a lot about cacao genetics, they know a lot about cacao machinery."

With flavors like ghost pepper and sea salt, the handcrafted goods here provide some fresh new options for satisfying your sweet tooth.

"We'll try our sea salt bar and see what you think,” Cheney says. “See if you can taste the potency of the cocoa bean coming through in this chocolate. So if we're doing our job right, this should be vibrant and bold in flavor. You should get a lot of that cocoa flavor coming through."

It is interesting tasting them side by side because I never would've expected that if I saw that bean, it would taste like this. It is not far away from the bean at all.