Chocolate is something Xoco chocolatier Kevin Young has been around most of his life.
His mother Annette ran the store’s predecessor, Xocolatl (the name refers to the Aztec word for chocolate), which was eventually sold to Terry Braun. The family then moved to the Lower Mainland.
Almost a year and a half ago though, Young, now 21, brought the family chocolate business back to the Cleveland Avenue site, reopening as Xoco, where he again works alongside his mom.
Young approaches his trade, in part, as a craftsman. For one batch, having made the shells the night before, he spreads out a ganache, then fills the shells, which will later be capped to complete the process.
“The first thing I do is decorate. Then I create the shell,” he says.
For the ganache, which needs eight to 10 hours to set, he spreads out the mixture on a slab, then spreads it with a spatula, scraping the excess back into the bowl. The mix typically sets in a few minutes.
Young estimates he spends anywhere from six to 14 hours a day making his chocolates, though it usually takes him eight hours.
His creations stretch the imagination when it comes to flavouring.
Sometimes, he will use the offerings from local distillers or brewers, or infuse a ganache with something like Earl Grey tea. Other times, he’ll use the more familiar.
“I use a lot of fruit, a lot of nut pastes,” he says.
All of it can become very “chemistry-based” when it comes to factors like temperature and timing.
“If we don’t follow those exact techniques, then it doesn’t turn out,” he says.
Young has helped his mom virtually all his life, but he didn’t get into chocolate as his own pursuit until his teens, when he made his first “bean-to-bar” chocolate at age 16 after becoming interested in processing cocoa beans. He began making bonbons at age 18.
Young studied with Melissa Coppel, who was running the Jean Marie Auboine School in Las Vegas. He also cites coming under the influence of master pastry chef Marco Ropke at the Pastry Training Centre of Vancouver a few years ago.
“He opened my eyes to high-quality chocolate,” Young says.
In theory, he was too young to be able to attend. “I was 18, I was just out of high school,” he says.
When the opportunity to reopen as Xoco arose, he decided to set up at the family business’s old location, right in time for Easter in 2015.
He had to do renovations, including learning how to drywall, as well as get the product ready for sale.
“It was the most hectic 10 days of my life,” he says.
These days, he has his regular local customers. Some of them even come in to buy one chocolate at a time, especially if there are new creations.
“My favourite thing to hear when someone walks in is ‘what’s new?’” he says. “We have such a positive group of people that come in here.”
Young has others, like some customers from Burnaby, who come to the area to paddleboard and will often spend $70 on chocolates.
He has been busy refining his craft of late.
“The last two or three months have been a big development for me,” he says.
He came up with one of his favourite recent creations during the middle of the night.
“I did it at about 3 o’clock in the morning,” he said.
It involved a milk chocolate ganache, and on top Young used a capsule of Italian olive oil.
“When you bit into it, the oil ran down,” he said. “It was super exciting… I’ve never put a liquid in the top of a bonbon before.”
Another favourite is one that, among other things, uses white chocolate and blueberries from Langley, which he forms into a reduction. He made it for a gala event at the Sea to Sky Gondola, but it’s become a regular.
“It’s one of my favourite chocolates to eat,” he says. “It’s always in the case.”
Young will often mix ingredients one might not expect. For one chocolate, he uses caramel and coffee but also includes a hint of chili. The latter flavour does not jump right out, but leaves a little bit of heat behind.
Beyond the taste, the chocolates are something to behold, almost like tiny works of art that require a moment to consider before eating.
“It’s nice to do more of the art side of chocolate,” he says. “I always want to eat something that looks nice.”
Recently, he took the artistic approach further by collaborating with a local artist, Cortez, for a series of artistic chocolates to be served at the opening of the artist’s show at the library gallery earlier this month. “I think his style lends very well to chocolate art because it’s abstract,” Cortez says. “They just approached me about a month ago and said, ‘Hey, is there anything we can do together?’”
For the preparation, Young had prepared cocoa butters in different colours, which were used for decorating the chocolates.
Young works with a lot of basic primary colours, so he was thrilled to see Cortez and fellow artist Liesl Petersen bring in so many extra hues, as well as some different tools used to create the chocolate art. These included things like string, beads or small combed toothpicks to run through the cocoa butter to make the designs. Meanwhile, another artist, Tea Cozey, was standing nearby documenting the whole process on camera.
Cortez compares the process of using the melted cocoa butter to watercolours, and he was clearly having a good time during the project.
“These chocolates are going to be cool,” Cortez says during the preparation. “I’m honoured to be working with this chocolate artist.”
The artists brought their own touches on the flavour end too, coming up with creations including one that mixes ingredients such as wasabi and honey, and Cortez is excited by the prospect of inventing a new flavour that no one has ever heard of before.
“I’m a bit of a chef myself,” he adds.
Young sees only more possibilities for this type of collaboration, and he has had inquiries from other artists.
“A chocolatier wants to give you an experience,” he says.
As to other possibilities on the horizon, Young wants to hold classes and is considering selling wholesale. He would also like to move into a market like Whistler.
He is looking at events built around pairings of scotch or beer with chocolate. Squamish has a growing number of specialty producers of beers, spirits, coffees and teas, which he thinks could provide opportunities for all of these creators to mix their talents.
Young also thinks it’s a sign of a changing cultural landscape in the community, which offers more unique experiences to visitors and locals – ones that can fuse different senses together, such as sight and taste. “I think there is a big market for art and culture in Squamish,” he says.
Whatever is ahead for Young, don’t expect it to be the same as what he is doing today.
While this approach helps keep those regular customers coming back into the store to find out what is new in the glass case, it is really more about Young taking any opportunity he can to grow at his craft – and his art. “I don’t want to get comfortable,” he says. “I want to push myself.”
