Arun Viswanathan S.K. visited the famous Hershey’s chocolate people when he was pursuing a dual Masters in Food Science and Technology at Cornell.
That, he says, was the starting point of his journey towards setting up his own chocolate place. He got lucky as he was accepted as an intern with renowned Dominique Personne of the Chocolate Line Fame in Belgium.
Arun attended a 45-day, certification programme stint there where he had an opportunity to observe and work with some of the best chocolate artisans.
Arun now makes his own chocolates and his line is called Ganache for Da Chocoholics. “At the moment it is just me with my mother helping out. I exercise the strictest food safety measures and care while making the chocolates, and I work with flavours that I know will appeal to our palettes.”
An Indian experience Arun learnt early to work with flavours that would go down well with Indian sensibilities. Taste the filter-coffee flavoured one, and you will know what I mean.
Other flavours he has incorporated are saffron, cardamom, banana...familiar, beloved flavours. He is also edgy with some of his ganache fillings, from the nose-tickling wasabi to a daring jalapeno-olive combo that he calls Devil’s Advocate. The lemon-pepper ganache and the one with orange-zest in it are firm office favourites, while we are waiting to taste the delicious sounding basil and lemon grass filling. Hazelnut, walnut, berries, passion fruit with seeds-and-all are some of the other picks.
Arun says he is experimenting all the time to come up with new chocolate flavours. He has developed something he calls Hot Choc. These are chocolate squares that you need to add to hot milk to get a delicious hot chocolate drink. He has a chocolate pizza too, with fruit toppings.
Try his Pots of Joy that come with cream fillings; Mastermind that is a delectable concoction of nuts and fruits supposed to energise; and a delicious chilli chocolate cookie. He has many other flavours and varieties too, that we leave you to find out about.
Arun offers hampers for special occasions and for Deepavali his range includes gift packs of Rs. 150, Rs. 200 and Rs. 350. These come with one chocolate with Happy Deepavali engraved on it as well as a greeting card that you could fill out before you gift it to someone. There is a range of other chocolates you can choose from.
If you want to pre order call 09994126708 or visit his facebook page facebook.com/ganachechocoholics?fref=ts
