September 23, 2025 • 40 mins
Julius Persoone, third-generation chocolatier, chef, and creative force behind one of Belgium’s most celebrated chocolate houses—joins Furqan to talk about reimagining what chocolate can be. From growing up in a Michelin-fed pastry family to carving out his own rebellious path, Julius shares how he turned family legacy into a playground for flavor, science, and storytelling.
We explore the dramatic moment when his entire kitchen staff walked out, how he rebuilt with restaurant chefs seeking better hours, and why he treats every chocolate like a plated dish. Julius dives into collaborations with Antwerp fashion designers (including “alien chocolate”), savory experiments with grass and tomato, and groundbreaking medical projects that help throat cancer patients taste again.
This conversation unpacks what it means to balance heritage with innovation, the future of chocolate as prices soar, and why the next generation of chefs must question everything to find their own identity.
If you’ve ever thought chocolate was “just sweets,” Julius will change your mind.
🎧 Fugitive Chefs is your window into alternative culinary careers and bold food innovation. New episodes every Tuesday. Follow, rate us & subscribe for more stories from the culinary underground.
🎙️ Hosted by Furqan from the Fugitive Chefs Podcast
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🔗 Connect with Julius Persoone
Instagram : @juliuspersoone
Website : https://juliuspersoone.com/en/
Chapters
00:00 Growing Up in a Chocolate Legacy
09:10 From Savory Kitchens to Pastry
18:45 Reinventing the Family Business
27:30 Fashion, Aliens & Experimental Flavors
36:50 Medical Chocolate and Healing Through Taste
45:00 The Future of Chocolate & Advice for Young Chefs
49:03 Outro
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So hello everyone and welcome again to another episode of
Fugitive Chefs Podcast. This is the show about chefs and
food, people who have stepped away from traditional kitchens
to create something more free, more personal and at many times
more meaningful. Today's guest is Julius.
Julius, welcome to the podcast. Hello, man, Thank you so much
for accepting this invitation ona short notice.
Actually, Julius was just comingback yesterday from a cocoa
(00:22):
plantation with the harvest and he's currently in Mexico.
So first of all, on top of that,I know you're based in Belgium,
but also taking time out right now on your on your trip.
I'm so grateful and just to tellpeople about about Julius.
Julius comes, I think from a very, I think you come from a
family which is about pastry andchocolates here.
I mean, Julius is the son of a Dominic person who's Belgium one
(00:43):
of the most celebrated chocolateyears.
And it's also very interesting for me.
I want to speak a little about how is it for you to grow up in
that kind of family and to now forge your own career and make
your own place in the chocolate world.
And also a little about what does it mean for you when we
talk about chefs, like how how close is a culinary in chocolate
world to each other? Because a lot of times when you
(01:03):
speak about chefs, the first image coming in your mind is a
very people working in restaurants with a savory kind
of kind of a chef. I think this pastry side of
things, especially chocolate being a nation itself gets kind
of left behind. So I want to also learn about
that and also know how did you end up in this career?
What do you do in your everyday business right now?
What does life look like for a person like you?
To see if we can possibly inspire people who kind of
(01:26):
aspire life like yours or a career like yours and how they
can kind of look for this path for themselves.
But before we dive into all of this, Julius, I would like to
know just from the beginning, like what was your first
connection to food, your first memory of food?
And when did you think that chocolate or food could be your
your career in the future? So to be to tell you the truth,
(01:46):
I'm actually third generation chocolate maker.
It was my grandfather who started it the company in 1992
and then he was, it was a very classic chocolate shop.
It was the classic fillings likeColini and caramels and classic
ganaches, right? My very classic favor.
And then my father was the second generation and he was
(02:08):
more experimental because he wastrained as a chef as well.
He worked in the Paris at the very, the famous streamish
lifestyle restaurant at that time.
And there he fell in love with chocolate.
And then he started working in the company as well.
And he made some very creative chocolate flavors with like in
that time. And now it's very common, but at
the time he made chocolates withwasabi and soya sauce and very
(02:30):
experimental flavors at that time.
And when I really remember, he delivered all the chocolates to
the three Michelin star restaurants of Belgium at that
time. So when I was very small, I
remember he picking me up from school, from kindergarten, and
we drove to Outslows from San Johanneman, Ho Funkley, the
(02:50):
Caramelites, all three Michelin star restaurants of that time.
And I remember seeing those kitchens and seeing the world
drive there, a brigade of 3540 people working with preparing
dishes, and it had something very magical for me.
So from that moment on, I knew Iwanted to become a chef later on
in life. So I did say culinary school
(03:10):
after because at first I wanted to be a chef.
I didn't really like chocolate because for me I find it a bit
boring at that time, chocolates making.
So I started as a chef. I worked in a few Michelin star
restaurants and then at the lastone where I worked, it was a
restaurant. Later, it's like a Korean 2
Michelin star restaurant and I ended up in a pastry section and
(03:32):
working there with all the different ingredients really
opened my mind. And I said OK, this is the
career I wanted to become. I wanted to come pastry chef
chocolates. So afterwards I studied
chocolate and pastry in United States, in Las Vegas.
And actually my goal was after that study to work in a
chocolate shop in New York. But then Corona broke out, so it
(03:54):
was quite difficult. So I came back to the chocolate
company of my mother and father,and I worked there in
production. But to tell you the truth, it's
actually went very wrong. My father had 30 people working
in his kitchen at that time. And in one month, they all said
they want to quit. They didn't like it.
(04:17):
They didn't want to work with mebecause I was the son and I had
a different vision. We're used to make those recipes
already, 20 years. So we don't want to change the
way of working. But yeah, I saw new techniques.
I saw how a kitchen worked, how how you make a good like, a way
of working. But they didn't understand and
they all left. So I was alone.
(04:38):
And my father say, you know, man, congratulations, you fucked
it up. Now it's your job.
You can be the chef right now. It's your responsibility.
But luckily, I had a lot of friends working in restaurant
kitchens, OK? And I called a lot of my friends
and they said, I know you like some pastry.
You want to work in our company,You want to make chocolates.
(04:59):
And to my surprise, other peoplereally liked it.
They went they did some thoughtsto say I really want to do
chocolate because the advantagespeople were used with Cordona to
be in the evenings at home. Right.
In Belgium, kitchens and so people really like the family
life situation. So what we do a chocolate line
(05:20):
at 5, you're finished working, so you have your whole night
that you can spend with your girlfriend, your kids, whatever.
So I think that was a huge step that people from the kitchen
area really wanted to work at our place because we'll do the
same creative things. We see also a chocolate, we
don't see it as a proline, we see it really as a dish with
multiple layer, multiple dimension.
We see the chocolate as the plate and then everything, all
(05:41):
the rest. We see it as the things that you
plate on the so that's how we really see chocolate and it was
a big surprise because you really changed a lot of the all
the recipes. We changed it the way of working
the atmosphere in the kitchen. We also work more on deeper
connection with our plantation team.
So it's the guys that work on our plantation because they
(06:01):
really play a lot more with the fermentation part of the cocoa
beans to create really new specific flavor profiles.
Yeah. And it was a big surprise.
I think it was the year 2023, ifI'm not mistaken, that we were
selected by Gomio as best chocolate shop for Belgium.
And that was the first time thatmy father said, OK,
congratulation. Who?
(06:23):
You saved the ship. Yeah.
Oh, but it's very cool. It's very crazy because I'm very
visually, visually person. So for me, a chocolate also has
to look very good and that opened a lot of doors.
So with new collaborations I like, for instance, we did the
collaboration with the Fashion Institute of Enter, with the big
fashion fashion designers of Enter and created a box, 12
(06:46):
pieces with all the most famous fashion designers of Belgium.
And those guys are completely nuts to work together with those
ends. Because I had one guy, Walter
von Bernell, yes, you know, Julius, I want to make a
chocolate that tastes like aliens.
So I was trained as assurance. It's fuck aliens.
How do aliens taste like? So the best ideas come when
(07:08):
you're laying in your bath. And for me, an alien looked very
similar to an octopus. So with this, with the suction
cups on top. So what we did, we made the
garden. So an ancient fish sauce of the
octopus. And then from that garden I made
a gummy bear, but in the shape of an octopus and take all.
(07:28):
And you placed that octopus leg,the gummy octopus like octopus
leg inside of the chocolate. And we brought it in combination
with Japanese cherry blossom. So the idea is you bite in the
chocolate, you pull with your teeth the gummy of fermented
octopus, and then you have the caramel of Japanese cherry
blossom. So that's one of the ways we
(07:49):
work and how we see chocolate. Yeah, yeah.
I mean the possibilities are arenumerous, right?
I mean, I think if I'm not wrong, your mother also has a
past in fashion. If I'm if I'm not wrong, is that
correct? Absolutely, indeed she was.
She studied as a fashion designer and also all her
packaging, she's they're very, very big, developed in.
(08:09):
Yeah, yeah, no, there's, there'sso much coming out of this.
I mean, I have so many thoughts.Honestly, I feel a lot of your
cardio has been very rebellious,if I'm not wrong.
And I'm very curious on like after having not just one like 2
generations behind you have donechocolates, why savory world?
Because like for me, for me, forme, for example, if I can talk
to myself, I actually got into cooking cause of liking pastry
(08:31):
and baking and things like that.But what annoyed me was that you
have to calculate a lot and you cannot see the result till the
end of it. So you, it's not like cooking
where you can throw stuff at thepot, it'll work.
So for you, why was it that you were more interested into chef
savory savory food? Because I like.
Their savory foods, yeah. But then I saw the possibility
(08:51):
to eat and then I saw the possibilities.
What you can do even if you withthe savory food inside the
chocolates I like, for instance,I had to do with chocolates for
a fashion brand, Delvo. It's like a very famous handbag
brand. And it was for Paris Fashion
Week and we had to do a collaboration based on the new
handbags. And one of their handbags was
(09:11):
based of brass. So I thought, OK, we're going to
make a chocolate to bonbon with freshly cut grass.
So what we did, we juiced grass and then I have an ultrasonic
machine in our factory. So we break the water molecules
of the of the grass to create a very intense grass flavor.
And then we brought it in combination with lacto fermented
(09:34):
Granny Schmidt apple and the celery.
And it was such an amazing chocolate.
It really brought me back to when I was a child playing
soccer in the garden of my parents.
And the flavor is so intense. So I think you have still a lot
of techniques to be discovered in the world of chocolate.
Yeah, yeah. And how was it for you?
Because I also know that you trained at some of the good
(09:56):
pastry and chocolate institutes.So like when somebody like you
enters who already has a vision that I do not want to do what's
already done, but still you depend on the basics of like
how, I don't know, tempering chocolate.
You want to learn it from the person who knows it the best.
How do you combine that respect for the traditional and still
having your own voice, which is innovative?
(10:16):
How do you balance those energies?
Well, what we do with our team is we question everything and we
test also because you get learned, OK, this is the way of
tampering, but why is it that way?
Is there a different way of tampering?
What is the perfect crystal thatyou have to form?
And what happens if you change your crystals as well?
So that's why I, I had a lot of respect and the way I, I as I
(10:39):
trained, but I immediately questioned everything that I
learned because I, I really, I remember we had to make like
classic fillings like fashion fluid and Raspberry.
It's something that I would never make now because it's not
my vision of how a product should you like.
And then I asked, OK, you add somuch Raspberry juice in
combination with chocolate and asked why is that?
(11:00):
I don't know because it's already done like this for 20-30
years. And that's something that I
don't understand. I want to understand why.
Why? And now we know because we use a
computer program to calculate our fillings.
Now I know, OK, and for instance, Raspberry puree, you
have this amount of water, you have this amount of fiber, you
have this amount of sugar. And then you know at your end
(11:23):
product that you need this amount of fiber, this amount of
sugar, this amount of cocoa butter as well to create the
perfect smooth filling. Because for me, it's very
important. Everybody can make a good
chocolate, but you have to make a with chocolate that stays for
a few weeks because people buy your chocolate, they keep it in
a box and then how much we calculate 3 weeks minimum that
(11:44):
people weight, that you, that you still have to eat the
chocolate. It has to be the exact same
flavor as it was before. So that is something that we
really focus on because it has to be perfect every single time.
We did also a study on fats, howdifferent fats make a difference
when you eat the chocolate, the melting point of the pet because
(12:04):
we play like for instance, if you want to make a chocolate, we
did one with tomato because whenI was very young, I had a tomato
passion. I crafted my own tomato.
So we made a jell of tomato and then we made in garage with waka
tides, like citrusy plant grows here in Mexico, olive oil.
But we really wanted to have that.
(12:25):
You first have the juice, the ganache of the juice of the
lacto tomato and then you have the olive oil and waka tide.
And to really split those flavors up taste wise, we play
with the temperature of the fat,of the melting point of the fat.
The first flavor that you reallywant to have, you want to have
it at the lower melting point and the second flavor because
when you chew is the first fat that will release and have the
(12:46):
flavor of the product. Wow.
No, it's a, it's a lot of calculations, right?
And it's a lot of like. It's absolutely everything is
timed and calculated. Yeah.
And that's chocolate. Yeah.
Yeah. And that is beautiful, I think.
I mean, also using all these, using science to your advantage,
because science works the way itworks.
You can mold it, but you need toknow the rules of it.
And you can know the melting points, as you said, Right.
(13:07):
That's super interesting for me.And how do you see yourself
different when it comes to you being the chef in the kitchens?
Because, you know, for me, it's very interesting.
As you said, you went with your father to these to these
restaurants delivering chocolates and today kind of you
were inspired by the people you saw in those kitchens.
But today kind of you end up in your father's shoes.
So your, your idea of yourself has changed over the period,
(13:28):
right? How do you see that?
Is that a compromise or is it that it took your time to just
value what the chocolate world is?
Or how did that journey take place for you?
Well, I'm very happy now. I think we work at our truck in
our our kitchen team. I think we work now with 35
people in kitchen and what we doevery day we do a team briefing.
That's all something that they did in the early days they
(13:50):
didn't do. And we really discussed recipes.
Like for instance, I asked Noah,OK, today you had to make this
recipe. Do you have points that we can
increase or make the recipe better?
What's what's for you that went wrong?
And then we make like an open discussion, 15 minutes different
recipes that people are working on to increase those, make those
better flavor rice, texture rice, also the way of working.
(14:12):
And then we also do an analyzer at the end of the week of all
the products that are being done.
We cut them, we taste them with the team.
We say, OK, this, we taste OK. The nuts are can be roasted 30
seconds more at a higher temperature.
Refill this or this or this. So that is something that I took
over from the kitchen world. A lot of briefings, team
briefings. That's the only way how to make
(14:33):
a difference at the end of the day and also to make your team
look all in the same direction. Like every Monday when we do the
big briefing all the that we're going to make those week TV
shows. What happens this week in
production of important guests because we also have now a
dessert bar where we make like desserts based on ingredients of
(14:54):
our plantation Mexico. We discuss all the guests as are
coming and that's really something that very important to
really let people feel that theyare important that every step is
every person in your team is a very important one to create in
the final product that is exceptional.
So I think those are very important things to really keep
(15:14):
your team motivated. And every time I say to them,
OK, we want to go and try to be the best version of herself that
he can be, and that really helps.
And how do you see, for example,like when when you had these
questions about a career, you know, like switching back to
chocolates from the savory world, how was was there any
other carriers that came into your mind?
(15:35):
Like, wait, at any point do you think, you know, I don't want to
work in food, I want to work some other thing out.
Just I'm just curious if that was I would have thought.
Actually it was not. I always wanted to do something
with food. First was chef, then afterwards
was pastry chef and chocolate. But, you know, when I was very
small, my father asked me and mymother, what do you want for
(15:56):
your birthday? And a normal kid ask, you know,
I want to have a new game for myPlayStation or whatever.
I never ask those things. I always ask, you know what I
want to go eat at that restaurant.
OK, our dead restaurant. The dead restaurant.
And then when you're very young,you learn your flavor.
Butts develop very fast. And I still remember some of the
(16:18):
dishes that I eat when I was 11 years old, like at the Fat Duck
or Albert Abria flavors that really come back.
And that I still can notice backwhen I, when we create a recipe,
I can taste. Fuck, it reminds me of a dish
that I ate once at that restaurant when I was a kid.
And I feel now when I'm getting older, I lose a bit those
memories, not when I from when Iwas a kid, but when I now go to
(16:41):
a like a fancy restaurant, I taste of my very nice dishes.
It's more difficult to remember then.
But when you're a kid, it reallystays in memory for life.
No, definitely. I think yeah, I think those
formative views are what kind ofyeah, form the opinion of like
where you see yourself, what kind of inspirations do you
have. And I think with your career,
for sure there have been curves to itself.
(17:01):
But as you see it's like more connected to food.
I think also like with with yourchocolate business, I think you
reach much more people. You have your own personal voice
then you would have in a restaurant, because restaurants,
again, you have the head chef who has a voice and the rest of
them are kind of kind of kind ofreplicating things to be able to
kind of have that philosophy. But I think chocolate itself,
people see it very limiting, butit's very beautiful how you've
(17:23):
explained these examples. I think there is so many, so
many tangents over there and youhave these one.
More example as well. Yeah, yeah, One of the
collections also for the designers, different designer
used designs of Bambi. You know Bambi did this movie.
Yeah, of course. So I, I checked in my my team
and said, OK, we had to make a chocolate with bum with the
inspiration and the design of Bambi.
(17:45):
So what we did, we made for me, Bambi reminded me of deer, what
we usually eat. So we made dried deer meats very
thin. And then we dried it and made it
very crunchy. And I made a praline of deer
meats and combination with the gel of BlackBerry.
So when you eat the chocolate, you have BlackBerry and beer,
but really the flavor of roasteddeer and what we, what we use
(18:08):
also was powder that we made of burn rosette.
So amazing. It's very so flavor flavorful.
So Can you imagine eating a chocolate BlackBerry deer and
burn rosette? So it's, that's how we see the
chocolate and that's how also I don't know if you saw the video
of our production, how the driveis in our kitchen.
(18:30):
It's really similar to a kitchenand a restaurant.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that that will be curious
about. When I was looking at it, I was
like, this looks, looks, it looks like it's been designed
with somebody who has had a restaurant kitchen behind their
head. I think that that's also like, I
think when you, when that's yourcomfort space, you get used to
kind of using that as your palate to transform, you know,
But I mean, I cannot not ask youthe question, especially when
(18:50):
you're in Mexico right now on what is your view about the
current chocolate world? So beyond your business, how do
you see chocolate as a business on how it is not only because
your creations for short out to for a limited market for a
limited amount of people, but then again the chocolate has its
own very big FMCG consumer side to it.
How do you see chocolate right now?
Where we stand at 2025? Well, I think what you will see
(19:13):
now in the future, it's my vision, is when you go to the
supermarket and you see like thecookies with the chocolate layer
on top of them, I think those will be changed.
I think you will see chocolate flavor instead of real chocolate
in the future because the price of cacao is so high.
And I think it's a pity. But the other sides, I think
what we did because we had our own cocoa plantation, we already
(19:36):
paid a high price for a cocoa beans years ago.
It's not something now for the that we had only for a few
years. It's already I think we started
the plant, my father started theplantation 2012.
So it from that time on, we created driller own cocoa beans.
And then you have an interactionwith your tea, but then the
quality is also completely different.
(19:57):
You cannot compare chocolate barfrom the star to one that we
have, for instance, now we did one with Kodji as well.
But I think that's something that you will see in the future.
The name will be changed to chocolate flavored product
instead of chocolate products. But is it bad?
I don't know. Because, and if people want, I
(20:17):
think people's chocolate should be something affordable for
everybody. And that's something that we
really find very important in our store.
You can buy products in our store from €150 and you can buy
chocolates from one year of $0.80.
So I think that's for us very important.
Chocolate should be affordable for everybody.
Yeah. And and how much do you think a
(20:39):
consumer because especially withbusinesses like use, you know,
like, I mean, I'm not a chocolate business, so I can
name anybody who I want. Like I, I'm you are not Nestle
or Cadbury, so you don't have to, you really know the person
who's buying to a certain extent.
Like maybe the people behind these FMCG companies do not know
or do not have the chance to have conversation with people.
But as somebody who's who has, who has still a very a business
(21:00):
which can be limited to itself, how, how much do you think a
consumer understands how chocolate comes to your plate?
Like do people know chocolate, first of all, is affirmative
product. Do people know where chocolate
has grown? Because I feel that this
awareness could kind of make people realize that it's
something to be consumed with. Yes, it has to be affordable,
but you need to be aware about what you're consuming and would
be able to possibly value it more and maybe pay back more to
(21:23):
these farmers and create a better value chain.
How much do you see of that? I completely dream.
What we do is I do a lot of starches.
So I brought people from our plantation team like 2 months
ago, it was two guys from our plantation who worked one month
in our production site that theycould see how the chocolate is
made, what we do with their their spices as well.
(21:45):
Because we don't only grow cacao, we grow cinnamon, the key
limes, chili, habanero. We bring all those products to
Belgium and there we make different types of chocolate to
it. But that people that they see
what we do with it, that they also, so I bring them also to
our store that they can see how people react when they taste the
product that they grow. And then the other way around as
well. The last January I went with my
(22:07):
whole production team to the Plantation Mexico.
It was harvesting time. I said, guys, you know what, we
don't going to make chocolates for the end of the year.
We're going to harvest cacao. So we flow with, I don't know, I
think it was 35 people. We flow to Mexico.
We helped harvesting the cocoa pots.
And then they understand as wellif they make a mistake in a
recipe, that's very normal. A lot of pastries, you make a
(22:30):
mistake, you throw it away and then now they know to have one
kilogram of cacao, you need 2 Coca-Cola trees, which is a pain
in the ass to grow for one year to have 1K of cocoa or 1K of
chocolate. And now they understand way
better what it is to grow cacao and they have a lot more respect
(22:51):
for the product as well. And they think twice when they
make a mistake or when you say OK, we throw it away.
I think that's very important, but that's very limited.
It's only my kitchen team. What we try to do is we make we
make a lot of video of our plantation to show the people in
Belgium that I think people don't really understand.
But I really hope in the future people will have more respect
(23:12):
for chocolate because it will goaway.
I promise you at supermarkets they will not buy chocolate
anymore. They will have chocolate flavor
based products with real chocolate products.
I think those will go away. And I think the real artisans,
the real chocolate makers, will be the only places where you can
still buy real quality chocolate.
No, that's crazy. I mean, and what does that mean
(23:34):
for a country like like Belgium?Like do you see that?
Because I mean, I'm, I've been Belgium once like 2 years ago,
but I have no idea on how Belgium context.
Because chocolate is such an important part of society.
You have so many artisan chocolate brands even like in
San Sebastian, we have shops from from Belgium who have like
the bigger, bigger brands have their shops over here.
How does that play out? Like is the Belgian culture more
aware about it? Is the government doing
(23:55):
initiatives to help this out? What is the scene around
chocolate? Well, what you see now is most
of our colleagues were also in chocolate.
They don't have their own cocoa plantation, so they have to buy
chocolate from big resellers like Varona, Belcola Color Boat.
But they decide the price of thechocolates.
So what you will see is that theprices of the finished product
(24:17):
in the Proline's will increase in price and then you'll go, go
to a time, not now, but maybe infuture that will be two €3
apiece that you pay for a chocolate.
So I think that's what's going to happen in the future, to be
truly honest with you. Yeah, no, definitely.
I mean, that's that's what we need in the end, I think.
I think the earlier we are aware, the earlier we can make
better choices and kind of protect of of what's left, you
(24:40):
know. But I also want to go back to
the point that you mentioned at the beginning.
I remember how you mentioned about how people during COVID
choose to work with you because pastry chef life or especially
brands like you, companies like you who can offer these hours of
working during the day. Because again, chocolate is not
something which is consumed fresh out of the fire to
something which can be preservedto a certain extent.
I want to really know from you if there is like how real is
(25:05):
this life in, in, in say of this?
Because a lot of people listening maybe are people who
are, who like more intricate things, who like more details,
who also want maybe a family life where they can have an
evening free. How do you see the comparison
between these worlds? And is there also like
phenomenons like kitchen burnoutin the pastry or chocolate
field, or is it something just in the savory feed because of
(25:25):
the work hours? Well, I think it's way less than
you have in the kitchen world, but I'm sure you you still have
problems. Anyway, the big advantages at
our places the the team that works really in the chocolate,
they work from Monday to Friday.So they don't work the weekends
and they start at 8 till quarterbefore 5.
(25:45):
That's the hours they work. And then Friday, Saturday,
Sunday we have our our dessert bar that's opening.
So you have you can have Diggy station menu based on desserts
where you can have nine courses desserts and that is open from
11:00 in the morning till 6:00 in the evening.
So I think it's very reasonable hours, but then you have to work
(26:06):
in a weekend as well. But I think to bring it.
And then we I shift a lot with my team there.
I have two responsible at the dessert bar and the rest of the
team. It's people from more production
team that say, you know, I want to work one day in the in the
dessert bar or two days in the dessert bar.
And then that's how we build up the team.
So I never push my, my people tosay you have to do this or you
(26:29):
have to do this. I ask them, you want to do it,
great. You don't want to do it the
same, the same friends. But when you're here, I expect
you to give 100% of yourself. And then anyway, it doesn't
matter because I need those people as well to do me some
plus of the car and to do different things.
And so if they are now there in the weekend or they're in the
(26:50):
and the production team during the week, it's the same.
And when we talk about innovation, at least in your
brand and also in the like the broader chocolate world, where
do you see it more coming from these innovation coming more
from technique? Is it coming from
sustainability? Is it coming from flavour?
Is it coming from ingredients that are growing, for example,
your plantation? What is the drive for innovation
primarily? So I'm going to tell you
(27:11):
stories. Something very cool that I did
and something very close to my heart as well.
It was 3 chocolates that I did for the medical world.
OK, so in 2000 and I think. But you know, match, these words
are like putting medical and chocolate together is not
absolutely. I'm very curious about the story
because it's it's it's not the typical matchmaking.
It's it's something very, very amazing and something very that
(27:34):
makes me still very emotional. I did a collaboration for Food
Vision. It was like it was the symposium
of foods from Food Sperry. And maybe, you know, it's like,
yeah, yeah. Websites to create different
flavors and they brought 2 persons from different types of
industry together. So they placed me together with
Professor Thomas Moore. It's a Doctor Who was
(27:55):
specialized in throat cancer patients.
OK. And then I had a lot of
discussions with him, what can we do bring chocolate and the
throat cancer specialist together.
And then we discussed maybe should make a chocolate
especially for throat cancer patients.
And then asked as well, what's what's, what's the, the reason
that they don't taste as good asthey did before?
(28:17):
And then we found out that when a patient has chemotherapy, you
lose the ability to produce saliva.
And due to the ability to lose saliva, you lose the ability to
taste certain flavors. But we didn't know what type of
flavors. So what we did, we went to
throat cancer patients. And then before chemotherapy, we
give them a lot of different ingredients like strawberry
(28:39):
mint, chili chocolate, banana, passionfruit, whatever.
A lot of ingredients. After chemotherapy, we
blindfolded them and we let themtaste the same ingredients,
strawberry, mint, chili. And then we found out that
strawberry and mint are the two flavors hardest to identify
after chemotherapy, especially for throat cancer patients.
(29:03):
So that was something very interesting for us to start up.
So we know, OK, when are you going to make a chocolate for
throat cancer patients has to contain strawberry in it was the
first thing that we knew. What we did then is research why
they didn't taste this group. And we found out it was due to
the loose of ability to produce saliva.
So we went into the lab and we created artificial saliva, OK.
(29:27):
An artificial saliva has a combination of different
enzymes, salts and water. And the first Test that we did
was very difficult because how to how should you make a perfect
saliva? And I was trained as a chef, so
I know, OK, we're going to do Kappa and Agar and Santana and
how to because it had to have a certain amount of salt texture.
Yeah. And then the second Testite and
(29:49):
it was a complete flop because it looked more like when you
were sick and you had like. Like a mucus.
Flim A flim, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that was the first look of the gel because the enzymes had
the special reaction to it. Then the second test what I did,
I used the same enzymes as saltsand I went at the body
(30:09):
temperature 37° to make the gel.And then you had the very
perfect saliva texture. Wow.
Then we already had the first two layers, so we had the layer
of artificial saliva. We have a layer of strawberry
and mint. And then we what we then also
found out from the chemotherapy patients is that when you have
naturally acids, it helps the patient to increase the ability
(30:33):
to make saliva. So for the chocolate, we chose a
bean to bar chocolate from our plantation Mexico.
But what we did, we added yeast of sourdough bread after the
last fermentation. So classically chocolate has 2
two types of fermentation, firstan alcoholic, then a lactic and
then usually it stops. But then we added the yeast of
the sourdough bread to create a very acidic chocolate as the
(30:56):
shell. So first we had the shell,
acidic sourdough chocolate, a layer strawberry mint and a
layer of artificial saliva. We gave that to the patients and
reaction with amazing men. People started to cry that they
could taste again the flavor that they could taste before.
(31:16):
It's really something amazing. And then the problem is the
shelf life of the product is very short because the enzymes
of the saliva, it eats the chocolate.
So we have a shelf life of I think it's two days, 2-3 days.
So it was very to show the rest of the world what you can do
with chocolate and how 2 crazy people, how we can make
(31:38):
something very cool. But really to see the reaction
of the people, it's really amazing.
Yeah, it's really the reason whywe do it.
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's amazing.
I mean, and that's the whole point.
I mean, even if you say it's not, it's perishable, it's not
scalable, I think it's still, itis, it is a breakthrough, I
think to be, to be able to mimic, mimic this for somebody
who's who's, yeah, lost the sense of tasting something so
(32:00):
precious. I think it's a, it's, it's
again, one more proof of how much can you once you dedicate
to one kind of 11-R to one subject, how much can you push
the boundaries of defining how groundbreaking that can be?
And that's, that's super interesting for me.
And I have another question for you, Julius.
Is it, it is how much of like the, the brand of the company
that your, your, your father andyour grandfather built?
(32:22):
How much of it do you take forward And how much of you do
you think you have kind of reformulated in your own ways
that what do you take back from the company that existed and
what have you added to the the current form of business?
So I think it's around 90% of new products, OK, I have 10% of
classics of my grandfather and my father that I said out of
(32:45):
respect of them, I'm never goingto change because I think it's
some heritage that you need to keep.
And then 90% of the new flavors,we're very difficult to be out
because every year I have a big briefing with my whole, my whole
team. We taste all the products and
then we say, OK, this product was very nice, but now it's not
(33:07):
any more depression that you want to bring.
So we changed. So I think 90% of the products
we change every time. Every year it change, every two
years it change until we're bored of it and then we go for
something new. But I wanted to just tell you
one more thing. This year at Tomorrowland, I
released a new medical product, a new medical chocolate.
And it was a chocolate for Azer Tuning.
(33:29):
It's in a very big hospital in Belgium and we created a
chocolate for people who to in search of throat cancer.
So because now when you when thedoctors say you have pain in
your on your your throat and youhave to do a test, what you have
to do now is you have to go to the doctor and then he lets you
paste a sandwich or with contrast liquids conference
(33:53):
liquid. It's a liquid that blows when
you take an X-ray. Yeah.
But the problem is the flavor ofthat liquid.
It's very bad. It's very.
It's not good. I've tried like AI had a scan, a
body scan and it's horrible and you can't because it makes you
throw up a lot. And if you throw up, it will
start it again because they did like a CD scan of my stomach, I
remember. And that's it's horrible.
(34:15):
Indeed, the taste. So I did a test as well and we
wanted to do something especially for that type of
patients because we want to solve that problem.
So what we did from the contrastliquid, I made the gel in
combination with key limes from our plantation Mexico, and I put
it under the ultrasonic machine.It's the machine to bring the
water molecules. And with that machine we could
(34:37):
reduce the dose of the contrast liquid in the perfect amount for
one chocolate. So we made a chocolate with the
flavor of key limes, contrast liquid.
And for the chocolate itself, wechose a Kodji chocolate.
It's a chocolate that we roastedat the very low temperature that
still has a percentage of water inside.
We add Kodji grains and then we let it age for three months to
(34:59):
give it a very umami flavor. And the umami flavor helps the
patient to trigger the swallowing process.
So it's very cool. Now.
The 50 patients last week were tested not anymore with the
sandwich, with the contrast liquid, with, with the real
chocolate that they had to bite in.
They had the flavor of citrusy Key Lime.
The doctors say now it's the moment to swallow.
(35:21):
They swallow and then you can take an X-ray throat of the of
the throat of the patient. And it helps the research for
throat cancer. So I think you can play a lot
with chocolate. And it makes people really think
about the way of food can help us all.
I think it's the nicest thing. Yeah.
But I just wanted to tell you that story.
Sorry. No, no, thank you so much for
(35:41):
sharing it. I think it's like it's again, I
think as you said it many times in the in the in the podcast,
that chocolate again, is not just it's not just something you
can do, but it's a lot of emotions as well.
For many people, it's a sign of celebration.
For many people, it's one of thefew celebration things they've
had. And as you said, it has to be
affordable for people. And it's so interesting to see
how you're making this other connection with like the whole
and the medical side of things, the research side of things and
(36:03):
combining it with the ingredients that are growing,
growing around it. So it's like for me, just think
all these stories are super inspiring.
And if you would like to share just the last few things about
what are the next few things like the future of your company,
not chocolate, because about chocolate we spoke already, but
what are the next few exciting projects that you're looking at
or what are you looking forward to in 2025?
Well, now I think when I'm, whenI'm now back in Belgium, are we
(36:26):
going to start with the next step in our dessert bar?
We're going to really scale up the degr station part because we
had one small table that we did right now and it's already now
full booked until January for the dessert bar.
So we're going to try to increase the volume a bit that
we can invite more people to ourdessert bar, dessert restaurant.
(36:47):
I'm going to do a rolling pin, arolling pin convention in
Germany and Dusseldorf. I'm going to do the explanation
on the mainstage. What we do now, we chocolate,
the newest techniques of chocolate.
I'm going to do some four hands.It's also theirs with the German
chef. Very cool.
And then traveling a lot for work, connecting with different
people from the industry. I go normally I go in January to
(37:10):
Gaga and February go to Japan and Milan.
We go this year to Best ever work.
So it's very cool to go and connect with different people
from the industry. And when you think and you can
speak with people from differentparts of the food industry, it
brings a lot of inspiration. I think that is the most most
important thing. Yeah, no, I think it sounds like
(37:32):
super exciting things to come. And I'm going to put a link to
your work, to your Instagram, toyour website as well in the show
notes. So yeah, I think people should
follow. I think people should follow the
kind of work you're doing to be Yeah, to listen more of these,
to see, as you said, these videos of how things work and
how business like yours work, toinspire, I think people who are
listening. But also before we wrap this up,
I would like to hear from you, Julius.
(37:52):
Like, think about people who arelistening to this, who have this
maybe a drive to to specialize in one craft, you know,
specialize in one certain thing about pastry, be it pastry, be
the savory world. What would you tell them, like
something that you would have have liked to listen when you
were in this, say, coming back from Las Vegas, taking the step
of, you know, I want to step back into chocolates and I want
(38:12):
to go into my father's company. I think these decisions are not
easy. And I think it's people like you
have gone through the journey who can possibly inspire the
next generation of change. So what would you say to them?
I would say question everything and when you think you know it,
question it again because at theend of the day, you're going to
come back on all the recipes that you did and also think
about what is really because your own style.
(38:36):
That's also something that I really sell to the people where
that work in in my kitchen is. It's not our style to do
something with passion fruit andto do something with coconut and
mango. And because it's not our
identity, I only want to work with ingredients that we grow at
our plantation. Mexico order that very close to
a production site in Brugge. I don't want to work with
(38:57):
Kalamanci because Kalamanci has nothing to do with me.
It's something from Philippines,Thailand, and it should stay
there. But work more local and really
try to find your own identity asa pastry ship.
Like for instance, one of the first dish you get in our
dessert bar is the cocoa husk miso ice cream.
We roast our cocoa beans and then the shell of the cocoa
(39:19):
beans get taken off and then youstill have the coconut.
Usually the shell get thrown away.
But what we do with the shell wemake a measle in combination
with an ancient type of corn that we grow in our plantation,
Mexico. From that measle we make an ice
cream and we bring it in combination with an oil of
urbina and the snow of key limes.
(39:39):
So we use the zest of the key limes in our production, the
juice and then the leftovers, the pulp of the Key Lime.
We make an kosho with it and from that kosho we make it snow.
So with all products that are thrown away, we make the first
dish that you get when you get into our dessert bar.
So that's really, I think how people should look, question
(40:00):
ingredients that you throw away that you think now at the end of
that process, because you can make some really amazing dishes
and it's one of my favorite dishes as well and.
You know, it's been a, it's beena lovely conversation.
I mean, I say lovely. Well, the same time it's been a
very difficult conversation. I hope not for the people
listening because all the dishesyou explained, I feel like
you've made me picture them, butnot what like not let me taste
them to the screen. And I really hope to.
(40:22):
Yeah. See you, see you hopefully over
here on Belgium to come try all these things.
Absolutely. And yeah, looking, Yeah, really
looking forward to follow all the work that comes out of this.
And thank you so much once againfor taking time out.
And I wish you all the very bestfor the rest of it.
It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
So hello everyone and welcome again to another episode of
Fugitive Chefs Podcast. This is the show about chefs and
food, people who have stepped away from traditional kitchens
to create something more free, more personal and at many times
more meaningful. Today's guest is Julius.
Julius, welcome to the podcast. Hello, man, Thank you so much
for accepting this invitation ona short notice.
Actually, Julius was just comingback yesterday from a cocoa
(00:22):
plantation with the harvest and he's currently in Mexico.
So first of all, on top of that,I know you're based in Belgium,
but also taking time out right now on your on your trip.
I'm so grateful and just to tellpeople about about Julius.
Julius comes, I think from a very, I think you come from a
family which is about pastry andchocolates here.
I mean, Julius is the son of a Dominic person who's Belgium one
(00:43):
of the most celebrated chocolateyears.
And it's also very interesting for me.
I want to speak a little about how is it for you to grow up in
that kind of family and to now forge your own career and make
your own place in the chocolate world.
And also a little about what does it mean for you when we
talk about chefs, like how how close is a culinary in chocolate
world to each other? Because a lot of times when you
(01:03):
speak about chefs, the first image coming in your mind is a
very people working in restaurants with a savory kind
of kind of a chef. I think this pastry side of
things, especially chocolate being a nation itself gets kind
of left behind. So I want to also learn about
that and also know how did you end up in this career?
What do you do in your everyday business right now?
What does life look like for a person like you?
To see if we can possibly inspire people who kind of
(01:26):
aspire life like yours or a career like yours and how they
can kind of look for this path for themselves.
But before we dive into all of this, Julius, I would like to
know just from the beginning, like what was your first
connection to food, your first memory of food?
And when did you think that chocolate or food could be your
your career in the future? So to be to tell you the truth,
(01:46):
I'm actually third generation chocolate maker.
It was my grandfather who started it the company in 1992
and then he was, it was a very classic chocolate shop.
It was the classic fillings likeColini and caramels and classic
ganaches, right? My very classic favor.
And then my father was the second generation and he was
(02:08):
more experimental because he wastrained as a chef as well.
He worked in the Paris at the very, the famous streamish
lifestyle restaurant at that time.
And there he fell in love with chocolate.
And then he started working in the company as well.
And he made some very creative chocolate flavors with like in
that time. And now it's very common, but at
the time he made chocolates withwasabi and soya sauce and very
(02:30):
experimental flavors at that time.
And when I really remember, he delivered all the chocolates to
the three Michelin star restaurants of Belgium at that
time. So when I was very small, I
remember he picking me up from school, from kindergarten, and
we drove to Outslows from San Johanneman, Ho Funkley, the
(02:50):
Caramelites, all three Michelin star restaurants of that time.
And I remember seeing those kitchens and seeing the world
drive there, a brigade of 3540 people working with preparing
dishes, and it had something very magical for me.
So from that moment on, I knew Iwanted to become a chef later on
in life. So I did say culinary school
(03:10):
after because at first I wanted to be a chef.
I didn't really like chocolate because for me I find it a bit
boring at that time, chocolates making.
So I started as a chef. I worked in a few Michelin star
restaurants and then at the lastone where I worked, it was a
restaurant. Later, it's like a Korean 2
Michelin star restaurant and I ended up in a pastry section and
(03:32):
working there with all the different ingredients really
opened my mind. And I said OK, this is the
career I wanted to become. I wanted to come pastry chef
chocolates. So afterwards I studied
chocolate and pastry in United States, in Las Vegas.
And actually my goal was after that study to work in a
chocolate shop in New York. But then Corona broke out, so it
(03:54):
was quite difficult. So I came back to the chocolate
company of my mother and father,and I worked there in
production. But to tell you the truth, it's
actually went very wrong. My father had 30 people working
in his kitchen at that time. And in one month, they all said
they want to quit. They didn't like it.
(04:17):
They didn't want to work with mebecause I was the son and I had
a different vision. We're used to make those recipes
already, 20 years. So we don't want to change the
way of working. But yeah, I saw new techniques.
I saw how a kitchen worked, how how you make a good like, a way
of working. But they didn't understand and
they all left. So I was alone.
(04:38):
And my father say, you know, man, congratulations, you fucked
it up. Now it's your job.
You can be the chef right now. It's your responsibility.
But luckily, I had a lot of friends working in restaurant
kitchens, OK? And I called a lot of my friends
and they said, I know you like some pastry.
You want to work in our company,You want to make chocolates.
(04:59):
And to my surprise, other peoplereally liked it.
They went they did some thoughtsto say I really want to do
chocolate because the advantagespeople were used with Cordona to
be in the evenings at home. Right.
In Belgium, kitchens and so people really like the family
life situation. So what we do a chocolate line
(05:20):
at 5, you're finished working, so you have your whole night
that you can spend with your girlfriend, your kids, whatever.
So I think that was a huge step that people from the kitchen
area really wanted to work at our place because we'll do the
same creative things. We see also a chocolate, we
don't see it as a proline, we see it really as a dish with
multiple layer, multiple dimension.
We see the chocolate as the plate and then everything, all
(05:41):
the rest. We see it as the things that you
plate on the so that's how we really see chocolate and it was
a big surprise because you really changed a lot of the all
the recipes. We changed it the way of working
the atmosphere in the kitchen. We also work more on deeper
connection with our plantation team.
So it's the guys that work on our plantation because they
(06:01):
really play a lot more with the fermentation part of the cocoa
beans to create really new specific flavor profiles.
Yeah. And it was a big surprise.
I think it was the year 2023, ifI'm not mistaken, that we were
selected by Gomio as best chocolate shop for Belgium.
And that was the first time thatmy father said, OK,
congratulation. Who?
(06:23):
You saved the ship. Yeah.
Oh, but it's very cool. It's very crazy because I'm very
visually, visually person. So for me, a chocolate also has
to look very good and that opened a lot of doors.
So with new collaborations I like, for instance, we did the
collaboration with the Fashion Institute of Enter, with the big
fashion fashion designers of Enter and created a box, 12
(06:46):
pieces with all the most famous fashion designers of Belgium.
And those guys are completely nuts to work together with those
ends. Because I had one guy, Walter
von Bernell, yes, you know, Julius, I want to make a
chocolate that tastes like aliens.
So I was trained as assurance. It's fuck aliens.
How do aliens taste like? So the best ideas come when
(07:08):
you're laying in your bath. And for me, an alien looked very
similar to an octopus. So with this, with the suction
cups on top. So what we did, we made the
garden. So an ancient fish sauce of the
octopus. And then from that garden I made
a gummy bear, but in the shape of an octopus and take all.
(07:28):
And you placed that octopus leg,the gummy octopus like octopus
leg inside of the chocolate. And we brought it in combination
with Japanese cherry blossom. So the idea is you bite in the
chocolate, you pull with your teeth the gummy of fermented
octopus, and then you have the caramel of Japanese cherry
blossom. So that's one of the ways we
(07:49):
work and how we see chocolate. Yeah, yeah.
I mean the possibilities are arenumerous, right?
I mean, I think if I'm not wrong, your mother also has a
past in fashion. If I'm if I'm not wrong, is that
correct? Absolutely, indeed she was.
She studied as a fashion designer and also all her
packaging, she's they're very, very big, developed in.
(08:09):
Yeah, yeah, no, there's, there'sso much coming out of this.
I mean, I have so many thoughts.Honestly, I feel a lot of your
cardio has been very rebellious,if I'm not wrong.
And I'm very curious on like after having not just one like 2
generations behind you have donechocolates, why savory world?
Because like for me, for me, forme, for example, if I can talk
to myself, I actually got into cooking cause of liking pastry
(08:31):
and baking and things like that.But what annoyed me was that you
have to calculate a lot and you cannot see the result till the
end of it. So you, it's not like cooking
where you can throw stuff at thepot, it'll work.
So for you, why was it that you were more interested into chef
savory savory food? Because I like.
Their savory foods, yeah. But then I saw the possibility
(08:51):
to eat and then I saw the possibilities.
What you can do even if you withthe savory food inside the
chocolates I like, for instance,I had to do with chocolates for
a fashion brand, Delvo. It's like a very famous handbag
brand. And it was for Paris Fashion
Week and we had to do a collaboration based on the new
handbags. And one of their handbags was
(09:11):
based of brass. So I thought, OK, we're going to
make a chocolate to bonbon with freshly cut grass.
So what we did, we juiced grass and then I have an ultrasonic
machine in our factory. So we break the water molecules
of the of the grass to create a very intense grass flavor.
And then we brought it in combination with lacto fermented
(09:34):
Granny Schmidt apple and the celery.
And it was such an amazing chocolate.
It really brought me back to when I was a child playing
soccer in the garden of my parents.
And the flavor is so intense. So I think you have still a lot
of techniques to be discovered in the world of chocolate.
Yeah, yeah. And how was it for you?
Because I also know that you trained at some of the good
(09:56):
pastry and chocolate institutes.So like when somebody like you
enters who already has a vision that I do not want to do what's
already done, but still you depend on the basics of like
how, I don't know, tempering chocolate.
You want to learn it from the person who knows it the best.
How do you combine that respect for the traditional and still
having your own voice, which is innovative?
(10:16):
How do you balance those energies?
Well, what we do with our team is we question everything and we
test also because you get learned, OK, this is the way of
tampering, but why is it that way?
Is there a different way of tampering?
What is the perfect crystal thatyou have to form?
And what happens if you change your crystals as well?
So that's why I, I had a lot of respect and the way I, I as I
(10:39):
trained, but I immediately questioned everything that I
learned because I, I really, I remember we had to make like
classic fillings like fashion fluid and Raspberry.
It's something that I would never make now because it's not
my vision of how a product should you like.
And then I asked, OK, you add somuch Raspberry juice in
combination with chocolate and asked why is that?
(11:00):
I don't know because it's already done like this for 20-30
years. And that's something that I
don't understand. I want to understand why.
Why? And now we know because we use a
computer program to calculate our fillings.
Now I know, OK, and for instance, Raspberry puree, you
have this amount of water, you have this amount of fiber, you
have this amount of sugar. And then you know at your end
(11:23):
product that you need this amount of fiber, this amount of
sugar, this amount of cocoa butter as well to create the
perfect smooth filling. Because for me, it's very
important. Everybody can make a good
chocolate, but you have to make a with chocolate that stays for
a few weeks because people buy your chocolate, they keep it in
a box and then how much we calculate 3 weeks minimum that
(11:44):
people weight, that you, that you still have to eat the
chocolate. It has to be the exact same
flavor as it was before. So that is something that we
really focus on because it has to be perfect every single time.
We did also a study on fats, howdifferent fats make a difference
when you eat the chocolate, the melting point of the pet because
(12:04):
we play like for instance, if you want to make a chocolate, we
did one with tomato because whenI was very young, I had a tomato
passion. I crafted my own tomato.
So we made a jell of tomato and then we made in garage with waka
tides, like citrusy plant grows here in Mexico, olive oil.
But we really wanted to have that.
(12:25):
You first have the juice, the ganache of the juice of the
lacto tomato and then you have the olive oil and waka tide.
And to really split those flavors up taste wise, we play
with the temperature of the fat,of the melting point of the fat.
The first flavor that you reallywant to have, you want to have
it at the lower melting point and the second flavor because
when you chew is the first fat that will release and have the
(12:46):
flavor of the product. Wow.
No, it's a, it's a lot of calculations, right?
And it's a lot of like. It's absolutely everything is
timed and calculated. Yeah.
And that's chocolate. Yeah.
Yeah. And that is beautiful, I think.
I mean, also using all these, using science to your advantage,
because science works the way itworks.
You can mold it, but you need toknow the rules of it.
And you can know the melting points, as you said, Right.
(13:07):
That's super interesting for me.And how do you see yourself
different when it comes to you being the chef in the kitchens?
Because, you know, for me, it's very interesting.
As you said, you went with your father to these to these
restaurants delivering chocolates and today kind of you
were inspired by the people you saw in those kitchens.
But today kind of you end up in your father's shoes.
So your, your idea of yourself has changed over the period,
(13:28):
right? How do you see that?
Is that a compromise or is it that it took your time to just
value what the chocolate world is?
Or how did that journey take place for you?
Well, I'm very happy now. I think we work at our truck in
our our kitchen team. I think we work now with 35
people in kitchen and what we doevery day we do a team briefing.
That's all something that they did in the early days they
(13:50):
didn't do. And we really discussed recipes.
Like for instance, I asked Noah,OK, today you had to make this
recipe. Do you have points that we can
increase or make the recipe better?
What's what's for you that went wrong?
And then we make like an open discussion, 15 minutes different
recipes that people are working on to increase those, make those
better flavor rice, texture rice, also the way of working.
(14:12):
And then we also do an analyzer at the end of the week of all
the products that are being done.
We cut them, we taste them with the team.
We say, OK, this, we taste OK. The nuts are can be roasted 30
seconds more at a higher temperature.
Refill this or this or this. So that is something that I took
over from the kitchen world. A lot of briefings, team
briefings. That's the only way how to make
(14:33):
a difference at the end of the day and also to make your team
look all in the same direction. Like every Monday when we do the
big briefing all the that we're going to make those week TV
shows. What happens this week in
production of important guests because we also have now a
dessert bar where we make like desserts based on ingredients of
(14:54):
our plantation Mexico. We discuss all the guests as are
coming and that's really something that very important to
really let people feel that theyare important that every step is
every person in your team is a very important one to create in
the final product that is exceptional.
So I think those are very important things to really keep
(15:14):
your team motivated. And every time I say to them,
OK, we want to go and try to be the best version of herself that
he can be, and that really helps.
And how do you see, for example,like when when you had these
questions about a career, you know, like switching back to
chocolates from the savory world, how was was there any
other carriers that came into your mind?
(15:35):
Like, wait, at any point do you think, you know, I don't want to
work in food, I want to work some other thing out.
Just I'm just curious if that was I would have thought.
Actually it was not. I always wanted to do something
with food. First was chef, then afterwards
was pastry chef and chocolate. But, you know, when I was very
small, my father asked me and mymother, what do you want for
(15:56):
your birthday? And a normal kid ask, you know,
I want to have a new game for myPlayStation or whatever.
I never ask those things. I always ask, you know what I
want to go eat at that restaurant.
OK, our dead restaurant. The dead restaurant.
And then when you're very young,you learn your flavor.
Butts develop very fast. And I still remember some of the
(16:18):
dishes that I eat when I was 11 years old, like at the Fat Duck
or Albert Abria flavors that really come back.
And that I still can notice backwhen I, when we create a recipe,
I can taste. Fuck, it reminds me of a dish
that I ate once at that restaurant when I was a kid.
And I feel now when I'm getting older, I lose a bit those
memories, not when I from when Iwas a kid, but when I now go to
(16:41):
a like a fancy restaurant, I taste of my very nice dishes.
It's more difficult to remember then.
But when you're a kid, it reallystays in memory for life.
No, definitely. I think yeah, I think those
formative views are what kind ofyeah, form the opinion of like
where you see yourself, what kind of inspirations do you
have. And I think with your career,
for sure there have been curves to itself.
(17:01):
But as you see it's like more connected to food.
I think also like with with yourchocolate business, I think you
reach much more people. You have your own personal voice
then you would have in a restaurant, because restaurants,
again, you have the head chef who has a voice and the rest of
them are kind of kind of kind ofreplicating things to be able to
kind of have that philosophy. But I think chocolate itself,
people see it very limiting, butit's very beautiful how you've
(17:23):
explained these examples. I think there is so many, so
many tangents over there and youhave these one.
More example as well. Yeah, yeah, One of the
collections also for the designers, different designer
used designs of Bambi. You know Bambi did this movie.
Yeah, of course. So I, I checked in my my team
and said, OK, we had to make a chocolate with bum with the
inspiration and the design of Bambi.
(17:45):
So what we did, we made for me, Bambi reminded me of deer, what
we usually eat. So we made dried deer meats very
thin. And then we dried it and made it
very crunchy. And I made a praline of deer
meats and combination with the gel of BlackBerry.
So when you eat the chocolate, you have BlackBerry and beer,
but really the flavor of roasteddeer and what we, what we use
(18:08):
also was powder that we made of burn rosette.
So amazing. It's very so flavor flavorful.
So Can you imagine eating a chocolate BlackBerry deer and
burn rosette? So it's, that's how we see the
chocolate and that's how also I don't know if you saw the video
of our production, how the driveis in our kitchen.
(18:30):
It's really similar to a kitchenand a restaurant.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that that will be curious
about. When I was looking at it, I was
like, this looks, looks, it looks like it's been designed
with somebody who has had a restaurant kitchen behind their
head. I think that that's also like, I
think when you, when that's yourcomfort space, you get used to
kind of using that as your palate to transform, you know,
But I mean, I cannot not ask youthe question, especially when
(18:50):
you're in Mexico right now on what is your view about the
current chocolate world? So beyond your business, how do
you see chocolate as a business on how it is not only because
your creations for short out to for a limited market for a
limited amount of people, but then again the chocolate has its
own very big FMCG consumer side to it.
How do you see chocolate right now?
Where we stand at 2025? Well, I think what you will see
(19:13):
now in the future, it's my vision, is when you go to the
supermarket and you see like thecookies with the chocolate layer
on top of them, I think those will be changed.
I think you will see chocolate flavor instead of real chocolate
in the future because the price of cacao is so high.
And I think it's a pity. But the other sides, I think
what we did because we had our own cocoa plantation, we already
(19:36):
paid a high price for a cocoa beans years ago.
It's not something now for the that we had only for a few
years. It's already I think we started
the plant, my father started theplantation 2012.
So it from that time on, we created driller own cocoa beans.
And then you have an interactionwith your tea, but then the
quality is also completely different.
(19:57):
You cannot compare chocolate barfrom the star to one that we
have, for instance, now we did one with Kodji as well.
But I think that's something that you will see in the future.
The name will be changed to chocolate flavored product
instead of chocolate products. But is it bad?
I don't know. Because, and if people want, I
(20:17):
think people's chocolate should be something affordable for
everybody. And that's something that we
really find very important in our store.
You can buy products in our store from €150 and you can buy
chocolates from one year of $0.80.
So I think that's for us very important.
Chocolate should be affordable for everybody.
Yeah. And and how much do you think a
(20:39):
consumer because especially withbusinesses like use, you know,
like, I mean, I'm not a chocolate business, so I can
name anybody who I want. Like I, I'm you are not Nestle
or Cadbury, so you don't have to, you really know the person
who's buying to a certain extent.
Like maybe the people behind these FMCG companies do not know
or do not have the chance to have conversation with people.
But as somebody who's who has, who has still a very a business
(21:00):
which can be limited to itself, how, how much do you think a
consumer understands how chocolate comes to your plate?
Like do people know chocolate, first of all, is affirmative
product. Do people know where chocolate
has grown? Because I feel that this
awareness could kind of make people realize that it's
something to be consumed with. Yes, it has to be affordable,
but you need to be aware about what you're consuming and would
be able to possibly value it more and maybe pay back more to
(21:23):
these farmers and create a better value chain.
How much do you see of that? I completely dream.
What we do is I do a lot of starches.
So I brought people from our plantation team like 2 months
ago, it was two guys from our plantation who worked one month
in our production site that theycould see how the chocolate is
made, what we do with their their spices as well.
(21:45):
Because we don't only grow cacao, we grow cinnamon, the key
limes, chili, habanero. We bring all those products to
Belgium and there we make different types of chocolate to
it. But that people that they see
what we do with it, that they also, so I bring them also to
our store that they can see how people react when they taste the
product that they grow. And then the other way around as
well. The last January I went with my
(22:07):
whole production team to the Plantation Mexico.
It was harvesting time. I said, guys, you know what, we
don't going to make chocolates for the end of the year.
We're going to harvest cacao. So we flow with, I don't know, I
think it was 35 people. We flow to Mexico.
We helped harvesting the cocoa pots.
And then they understand as wellif they make a mistake in a
recipe, that's very normal. A lot of pastries, you make a
(22:30):
mistake, you throw it away and then now they know to have one
kilogram of cacao, you need 2 Coca-Cola trees, which is a pain
in the ass to grow for one year to have 1K of cocoa or 1K of
chocolate. And now they understand way
better what it is to grow cacao and they have a lot more respect
(22:51):
for the product as well. And they think twice when they
make a mistake or when you say OK, we throw it away.
I think that's very important, but that's very limited.
It's only my kitchen team. What we try to do is we make we
make a lot of video of our plantation to show the people in
Belgium that I think people don't really understand.
But I really hope in the future people will have more respect
(23:12):
for chocolate because it will goaway.
I promise you at supermarkets they will not buy chocolate
anymore. They will have chocolate flavor
based products with real chocolate products.
I think those will go away. And I think the real artisans,
the real chocolate makers, will be the only places where you can
still buy real quality chocolate.
No, that's crazy. I mean, and what does that mean
(23:34):
for a country like like Belgium?Like do you see that?
Because I mean, I'm, I've been Belgium once like 2 years ago,
but I have no idea on how Belgium context.
Because chocolate is such an important part of society.
You have so many artisan chocolate brands even like in
San Sebastian, we have shops from from Belgium who have like
the bigger, bigger brands have their shops over here.
How does that play out? Like is the Belgian culture more
aware about it? Is the government doing
(23:55):
initiatives to help this out? What is the scene around
chocolate? Well, what you see now is most
of our colleagues were also in chocolate.
They don't have their own cocoa plantation, so they have to buy
chocolate from big resellers like Varona, Belcola Color Boat.
But they decide the price of thechocolates.
So what you will see is that theprices of the finished product
(24:17):
in the Proline's will increase in price and then you'll go, go
to a time, not now, but maybe infuture that will be two €3
apiece that you pay for a chocolate.
So I think that's what's going to happen in the future, to be
truly honest with you. Yeah, no, definitely.
I mean, that's that's what we need in the end, I think.
I think the earlier we are aware, the earlier we can make
better choices and kind of protect of of what's left, you
(24:40):
know. But I also want to go back to
the point that you mentioned at the beginning.
I remember how you mentioned about how people during COVID
choose to work with you because pastry chef life or especially
brands like you, companies like you who can offer these hours of
working during the day. Because again, chocolate is not
something which is consumed fresh out of the fire to
something which can be preservedto a certain extent.
I want to really know from you if there is like how real is
(25:05):
this life in, in, in say of this?
Because a lot of people listening maybe are people who
are, who like more intricate things, who like more details,
who also want maybe a family life where they can have an
evening free. How do you see the comparison
between these worlds? And is there also like
phenomenons like kitchen burnoutin the pastry or chocolate
field, or is it something just in the savory feed because of
(25:25):
the work hours? Well, I think it's way less than
you have in the kitchen world, but I'm sure you you still have
problems. Anyway, the big advantages at
our places the the team that works really in the chocolate,
they work from Monday to Friday.So they don't work the weekends
and they start at 8 till quarterbefore 5.
(25:45):
That's the hours they work. And then Friday, Saturday,
Sunday we have our our dessert bar that's opening.
So you have you can have Diggy station menu based on desserts
where you can have nine courses desserts and that is open from
11:00 in the morning till 6:00 in the evening.
So I think it's very reasonable hours, but then you have to work
(26:06):
in a weekend as well. But I think to bring it.
And then we I shift a lot with my team there.
I have two responsible at the dessert bar and the rest of the
team. It's people from more production
team that say, you know, I want to work one day in the in the
dessert bar or two days in the dessert bar.
And then that's how we build up the team.
So I never push my, my people tosay you have to do this or you
(26:29):
have to do this. I ask them, you want to do it,
great. You don't want to do it the
same, the same friends. But when you're here, I expect
you to give 100% of yourself. And then anyway, it doesn't
matter because I need those people as well to do me some
plus of the car and to do different things.
And so if they are now there in the weekend or they're in the
(26:50):
and the production team during the week, it's the same.
And when we talk about innovation, at least in your
brand and also in the like the broader chocolate world, where
do you see it more coming from these innovation coming more
from technique? Is it coming from
sustainability? Is it coming from flavour?
Is it coming from ingredients that are growing, for example,
your plantation? What is the drive for innovation
primarily? So I'm going to tell you
(27:11):
stories. Something very cool that I did
and something very close to my heart as well.
It was 3 chocolates that I did for the medical world.
OK, so in 2000 and I think. But you know, match, these words
are like putting medical and chocolate together is not
absolutely. I'm very curious about the story
because it's it's it's not the typical matchmaking.
It's it's something very, very amazing and something very that
(27:34):
makes me still very emotional. I did a collaboration for Food
Vision. It was like it was the symposium
of foods from Food Sperry. And maybe, you know, it's like,
yeah, yeah. Websites to create different
flavors and they brought 2 persons from different types of
industry together. So they placed me together with
Professor Thomas Moore. It's a Doctor Who was
(27:55):
specialized in throat cancer patients.
OK. And then I had a lot of
discussions with him, what can we do bring chocolate and the
throat cancer specialist together.
And then we discussed maybe should make a chocolate
especially for throat cancer patients.
And then asked as well, what's what's, what's the, the reason
that they don't taste as good asthey did before?
(28:17):
And then we found out that when a patient has chemotherapy, you
lose the ability to produce saliva.
And due to the ability to lose saliva, you lose the ability to
taste certain flavors. But we didn't know what type of
flavors. So what we did, we went to
throat cancer patients. And then before chemotherapy, we
give them a lot of different ingredients like strawberry
(28:39):
mint, chili chocolate, banana, passionfruit, whatever.
A lot of ingredients. After chemotherapy, we
blindfolded them and we let themtaste the same ingredients,
strawberry, mint, chili. And then we found out that
strawberry and mint are the two flavors hardest to identify
after chemotherapy, especially for throat cancer patients.
(29:03):
So that was something very interesting for us to start up.
So we know, OK, when are you going to make a chocolate for
throat cancer patients has to contain strawberry in it was the
first thing that we knew. What we did then is research why
they didn't taste this group. And we found out it was due to
the loose of ability to produce saliva.
So we went into the lab and we created artificial saliva, OK.
(29:27):
An artificial saliva has a combination of different
enzymes, salts and water. And the first Test that we did
was very difficult because how to how should you make a perfect
saliva? And I was trained as a chef, so
I know, OK, we're going to do Kappa and Agar and Santana and
how to because it had to have a certain amount of salt texture.
Yeah. And then the second Testite and
(29:49):
it was a complete flop because it looked more like when you
were sick and you had like. Like a mucus.
Flim A flim, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that was the first look of the gel because the enzymes had
the special reaction to it. Then the second test what I did,
I used the same enzymes as saltsand I went at the body
(30:09):
temperature 37° to make the gel.And then you had the very
perfect saliva texture. Wow.
Then we already had the first two layers, so we had the layer
of artificial saliva. We have a layer of strawberry
and mint. And then we what we then also
found out from the chemotherapy patients is that when you have
naturally acids, it helps the patient to increase the ability
(30:33):
to make saliva. So for the chocolate, we chose a
bean to bar chocolate from our plantation Mexico.
But what we did, we added yeast of sourdough bread after the
last fermentation. So classically chocolate has 2
two types of fermentation, firstan alcoholic, then a lactic and
then usually it stops. But then we added the yeast of
the sourdough bread to create a very acidic chocolate as the
(30:56):
shell. So first we had the shell,
acidic sourdough chocolate, a layer strawberry mint and a
layer of artificial saliva. We gave that to the patients and
reaction with amazing men. People started to cry that they
could taste again the flavor that they could taste before.
(31:16):
It's really something amazing. And then the problem is the
shelf life of the product is very short because the enzymes
of the saliva, it eats the chocolate.
So we have a shelf life of I think it's two days, 2-3 days.
So it was very to show the rest of the world what you can do
with chocolate and how 2 crazy people, how we can make
(31:38):
something very cool. But really to see the reaction
of the people, it's really amazing.
Yeah, it's really the reason whywe do it.
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's amazing.
I mean, and that's the whole point.
I mean, even if you say it's not, it's perishable, it's not
scalable, I think it's still, itis, it is a breakthrough, I
think to be, to be able to mimic, mimic this for somebody
who's who's, yeah, lost the sense of tasting something so
(32:00):
precious. I think it's a, it's, it's
again, one more proof of how much can you once you dedicate
to one kind of 11-R to one subject, how much can you push
the boundaries of defining how groundbreaking that can be?
And that's, that's super interesting for me.
And I have another question for you, Julius.
Is it, it is how much of like the, the brand of the company
that your, your, your father andyour grandfather built?
(32:22):
How much of it do you take forward And how much of you do
you think you have kind of reformulated in your own ways
that what do you take back from the company that existed and
what have you added to the the current form of business?
So I think it's around 90% of new products, OK, I have 10% of
classics of my grandfather and my father that I said out of
(32:45):
respect of them, I'm never goingto change because I think it's
some heritage that you need to keep.
And then 90% of the new flavors,we're very difficult to be out
because every year I have a big briefing with my whole, my whole
team. We taste all the products and
then we say, OK, this product was very nice, but now it's not
(33:07):
any more depression that you want to bring.
So we changed. So I think 90% of the products
we change every time. Every year it change, every two
years it change until we're bored of it and then we go for
something new. But I wanted to just tell you
one more thing. This year at Tomorrowland, I
released a new medical product, a new medical chocolate.
And it was a chocolate for Azer Tuning.
(33:29):
It's in a very big hospital in Belgium and we created a
chocolate for people who to in search of throat cancer.
So because now when you when thedoctors say you have pain in
your on your your throat and youhave to do a test, what you have
to do now is you have to go to the doctor and then he lets you
paste a sandwich or with contrast liquids conference
(33:53):
liquid. It's a liquid that blows when
you take an X-ray. Yeah.
But the problem is the flavor ofthat liquid.
It's very bad. It's very.
It's not good. I've tried like AI had a scan, a
body scan and it's horrible and you can't because it makes you
throw up a lot. And if you throw up, it will
start it again because they did like a CD scan of my stomach, I
remember. And that's it's horrible.
(34:15):
Indeed, the taste. So I did a test as well and we
wanted to do something especially for that type of
patients because we want to solve that problem.
So what we did from the contrastliquid, I made the gel in
combination with key limes from our plantation Mexico, and I put
it under the ultrasonic machine.It's the machine to bring the
water molecules. And with that machine we could
(34:37):
reduce the dose of the contrast liquid in the perfect amount for
one chocolate. So we made a chocolate with the
flavor of key limes, contrast liquid.
And for the chocolate itself, wechose a Kodji chocolate.
It's a chocolate that we roastedat the very low temperature that
still has a percentage of water inside.
We add Kodji grains and then we let it age for three months to
(34:59):
give it a very umami flavor. And the umami flavor helps the
patient to trigger the swallowing process.
So it's very cool. Now.
The 50 patients last week were tested not anymore with the
sandwich, with the contrast liquid, with, with the real
chocolate that they had to bite in.
They had the flavor of citrusy Key Lime.
The doctors say now it's the moment to swallow.
(35:21):
They swallow and then you can take an X-ray throat of the of
the throat of the patient. And it helps the research for
throat cancer. So I think you can play a lot
with chocolate. And it makes people really think
about the way of food can help us all.
I think it's the nicest thing. Yeah.
But I just wanted to tell you that story.
Sorry. No, no, thank you so much for
(35:41):
sharing it. I think it's like it's again, I
think as you said it many times in the in the in the podcast,
that chocolate again, is not just it's not just something you
can do, but it's a lot of emotions as well.
For many people, it's a sign of celebration.
For many people, it's one of thefew celebration things they've
had. And as you said, it has to be
affordable for people. And it's so interesting to see
how you're making this other connection with like the whole
and the medical side of things, the research side of things and
(36:03):
combining it with the ingredients that are growing,
growing around it. So it's like for me, just think
all these stories are super inspiring.
And if you would like to share just the last few things about
what are the next few things like the future of your company,
not chocolate, because about chocolate we spoke already, but
what are the next few exciting projects that you're looking at
or what are you looking forward to in 2025?
Well, now I think when I'm, whenI'm now back in Belgium, are we
(36:26):
going to start with the next step in our dessert bar?
We're going to really scale up the degr station part because we
had one small table that we did right now and it's already now
full booked until January for the dessert bar.
So we're going to try to increase the volume a bit that
we can invite more people to ourdessert bar, dessert restaurant.
(36:47):
I'm going to do a rolling pin, arolling pin convention in
Germany and Dusseldorf. I'm going to do the explanation
on the mainstage. What we do now, we chocolate,
the newest techniques of chocolate.
I'm going to do some four hands.It's also theirs with the German
chef. Very cool.
And then traveling a lot for work, connecting with different
people from the industry. I go normally I go in January to
(37:10):
Gaga and February go to Japan and Milan.
We go this year to Best ever work.
So it's very cool to go and connect with different people
from the industry. And when you think and you can
speak with people from differentparts of the food industry, it
brings a lot of inspiration. I think that is the most most
important thing. Yeah, no, I think it sounds like
(37:32):
super exciting things to come. And I'm going to put a link to
your work, to your Instagram, toyour website as well in the show
notes. So yeah, I think people should
follow. I think people should follow the
kind of work you're doing to be Yeah, to listen more of these,
to see, as you said, these videos of how things work and
how business like yours work, toinspire, I think people who are
listening. But also before we wrap this up,
I would like to hear from you, Julius.
(37:52):
Like, think about people who arelistening to this, who have this
maybe a drive to to specialize in one craft, you know,
specialize in one certain thing about pastry, be it pastry, be
the savory world. What would you tell them, like
something that you would have have liked to listen when you
were in this, say, coming back from Las Vegas, taking the step
of, you know, I want to step back into chocolates and I want
(38:12):
to go into my father's company. I think these decisions are not
easy. And I think it's people like you
have gone through the journey who can possibly inspire the
next generation of change. So what would you say to them?
I would say question everything and when you think you know it,
question it again because at theend of the day, you're going to
come back on all the recipes that you did and also think
about what is really because your own style.
(38:36):
That's also something that I really sell to the people where
that work in in my kitchen is. It's not our style to do
something with passion fruit andto do something with coconut and
mango. And because it's not our
identity, I only want to work with ingredients that we grow at
our plantation. Mexico order that very close to
a production site in Brugge. I don't want to work with
(38:57):
Kalamanci because Kalamanci has nothing to do with me.
It's something from Philippines,Thailand, and it should stay
there. But work more local and really
try to find your own identity asa pastry ship.
Like for instance, one of the first dish you get in our
dessert bar is the cocoa husk miso ice cream.
We roast our cocoa beans and then the shell of the cocoa
(39:19):
beans get taken off and then youstill have the coconut.
Usually the shell get thrown away.
But what we do with the shell wemake a measle in combination
with an ancient type of corn that we grow in our plantation,
Mexico. From that measle we make an ice
cream and we bring it in combination with an oil of
urbina and the snow of key limes.
(39:39):
So we use the zest of the key limes in our production, the
juice and then the leftovers, the pulp of the Key Lime.
We make an kosho with it and from that kosho we make it snow.
So with all products that are thrown away, we make the first
dish that you get when you get into our dessert bar.
So that's really, I think how people should look, question
(40:00):
ingredients that you throw away that you think now at the end of
that process, because you can make some really amazing dishes
and it's one of my favorite dishes as well and.
You know, it's been a, it's beena lovely conversation.
I mean, I say lovely. Well, the same time it's been a
very difficult conversation. I hope not for the people
listening because all the dishesyou explained, I feel like
you've made me picture them, butnot what like not let me taste
them to the screen. And I really hope to.
(40:22):
Yeah. See you, see you hopefully over
here on Belgium to come try all these things.
Absolutely. And yeah, looking, Yeah, really
looking forward to follow all the work that comes out of this.
And thank you so much once againfor taking time out.
And I wish you all the very bestfor the rest of it.
It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
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