Founded and operated by North Carolina natives Bob and Pam Cooper, Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory is the home of Hawaiis first homegrown chocolate.
Learn how they grow, harvest and process the cacao into chocolate, and enjoy free samples of our various chocolate products and 100% Hawaiian coffee. Address: 159 Kaiulani Ave #105, Honolulu, HI 96815, USA.
(16 oz bag) I use them to dip strawberries or make fresh berry bark and it's DELICIOUS!! Theres a new farm to bar farm stand on Kaukonahua Road on Saturdays 11:30-4 selling ultra fine single estate chocolate, next to the Queen Bee honey farm. Address: 64-1550 Kamehameha Hwy, Wahiawa, HI 96786, USA (this is the address for the Dole Plantation Tourist Center/Area). Interview with a Traveler @twobadtourists, The Weekly Postcard: Lunch at Big Sur, California, a visit to the Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory, #United Plant Savers: Planting the Future #Conference, Foto Flip Friday: Follow Your Dreams (Submit Week 1). the beans fermenting in their sweat boxes. Manoa is now run by husband & wife, Dylan & Tamara Butterbaugh, but was started by Dylan back when he was a college student in 2010. Of course. Most of the cacao on Oahu is cultivated on the North Shore, so youll have to leave the big city to visit a cacao farm, but its worth the trek. The Belgian company has been around for decades, and when I was a young teenager it was one of my favorite chocolate shops. Big Island Candies has outlets in both Hilo and Honolulu, but their goal in their selection of chocolates and cookies is to reflect the diversity of the Hawaiian Islands, a Herculean task they seem to do quite well. It is by the grace of Mother Nature that chocolate will grow in Hawaii and this is the only place in America where chocolate, also known as cacao, will grow quantitatively for the business of cultivating.. When youre on Oahu, chocolate trees are just a short drive away, and you can even tour a working cacao farm & a multitude of local chocolate factories. All of their staff also speak fluent Japanese; odds are that when you visit, many of the other customers will be Japanese, since they have such a strong market in Japan. Organizes farm tours + tastings Monday thru Friday from 2pm to 4pm. Smooth, not too sweet (allows the sweet berry natural tastes to come through!). With the hot sun shining even in late winter, its hard to imagine that Hawaii is a little chilly for any crop. If you're two of them, then I'm another several! You can find more vanilla farm tours on our BIG overview list of Big Island farm tours. Since I live in Honolulu, I don't want to have to drive the 1+ hour round trip, to get the chocolates (Whole Foods in Honolulu doesn't carry it) Do you know if FRUITS of the ISLANDS has an actual store front where I can buy their products? We learn how flavor is incited through fermentation in slatted mahogany boxes and exposure to sunlight. But with time & experience comes specialization, in this case resulting in a variety of customizable French-style bonbons for all occasions. Then, Bob takes us to the nearby workstation and uses a cleaver to slice open a ripe cocoa pod. Its cacao farming. good evening here in hamlet north carolina, I am a great friend of a man called cowboy are uall related he said that his daughter runs the candy place and she sends his cousin some something. The chocolate you are sampling this morning is a single origin chocolate. Reservations are mandatory at least three days in advance. Im not sure if its the marketing or the lilikoi truffles calling my name, but I wish Id been able to drive over on my trip to Hawaii! Visitors can see the liquid chocolate poured into molds and cooled before being wrapped. Some of these are still being made today, notably at Hawaiian Crown. (8 minutes north of Hilo) The Hamakua Chocolate Farm is located in Papaikou- a small village just above Hilo on the tropical Hamakua coast. As we enjoy the samples surrounded by lush vegetation, Bob Cooper tells us why this chocolate is so special. So, this actually becomes Hawaiis first, Americas first, and theworlds first and we take great pride in saying that.. Cooper tells us many interesting horticultural facts about the trees, like how big they get and the different aspects of pollination and how he must harvest his pods every two weeks. The Hawaiian Crown Plantation is with 30 years of operation one of the older cacao farms on the Big Island.
Your email address will not be published. In fact, Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory was the first place to grow and process chocolate in the entire United States. ; 10am-7pm, Sun. Did this post help you plan your trip to Hawaiian chocolate shops? They organize tree-to-chocolate farm tours (1 hour, $39) and, upon request, a wine, cheese and chocolate tasting experience. We share our favorite tips and images on Instagram, click here to go to our instagram account.
But when you visit the Dole Plantation on the North Shore of Oahu, you can see some fully-grown cacao trees growing on their property. The third flower is made from the first 100% Hawaiian-grown dark Grand Cru chocolate made using the rare and fine Criollo bean.
If youd still prefer Godiva then at this location youll find their usual selection of nearly 2 dozen bonbon flavors, chocolate-covered fruits, and chocolate ice creams. But Original Hawaiian Chocolate does it all, so there is more work to do in the factory. If you would like to visit a chocolate orchard and learn more about making chocolate you can do so at a few places here on the Big Island! During a 2.5 hour guided tour you get to see their farm, gardens and cacao processing facility, and enjoy a chocolate tasting experience. In their many chocolates you find tropical flavors such as passion fruit, Kona coffee, and salted macadamia nut. Malie Kai is a Japanese chocolate maker using (mostly) Hawaiian cacao to make their line of dark, milk, and white chocolate bars. grow cacao and offer farm tours: While better known for their Kona Coffee farm tours, they also grow cacao on their certified organic farm. Offers tours on Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:00 a.m. There are other Godiva shops in Honolulu. Honolulu chocolate shops can be rather far apart, however, and the bus system isnt very developed, so be sure to factor travel time into your visits. So Marcolinis selection of macarons, bonbons, and other typical Belgian confections is made with fine chocolate, but its not very Hawaiian (though there are some fruit flavors). You can join them for a chocolate candy making class, combined with a farm tour and tasting. The tour is led by Mike, the chocolate maker and farmer, and includes a view of their cacao orchard with over 400 trees, 1,600 white pineapple plants, turmeric, vanilla orchids, and lots of other cool stuff. CHOCOLATE AMATLLER Perfectly portioned bars of deliciousness! Use our site to plan your vacation in a sustainable way with minimum impact on the local environment.
Photo credits: Jay Jones / For the LA Times. Tours run every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 2:00pm to 3:00pm, more information on their website. That is, until about a decade ago, when Dole Foods began a relatively small commercial cacao farm on the North Shore. With a surprisingly large storefront for a chocolatier in Honolulu, Padovanis is a blend of French culinary expertise and Hawaiian flavors. But despite its small size, it has a huge variety of products, from soaps and ground coffee to chocolate bars and pineapple juice. While there is also a city named Kailua on the Big Island, this city is a quick flight and an hours drive from its counterpart. But theres also a cacao farm a little north of the city, offering great insight into chocolate making and agricultural lifestyles on Hawaii. It offers a taste of the aina and the stories that come with it. The North Shore of Oahu is where many of the biggest Hawaiian cacao farms are located, including the Dole Plantation (currently the largest producing cacao farm on Hawaii).
Have you ever visited Honolulu, or Hawaii in general? Until he opened the shop in late 2017, his bars were only available online. If youre pressed for time, but know that youre near a Foodland, its worth stopping in for a look at the chocolate selection. Tours take 2 to 2.5 hours, and include a look around their fruitful farm, a complete overview of how chocolate is made from tree to bar, and a chocolate & honey tasting. The owner & head chocolatier combined European-made chocolate with a portion of locally-sourced Hawaiian chocolate. Sees is a popular shop around the world, and there is a Sees Candies in Honolulu, but I feel its my duty to point you towards a local chocolatier or chocolate maker in Honolulu, like Lonohana or Manoa Chocolate. One of the newest additions to the Hawaiian chocolate scene, Lonohanas retail store in downtown Honolulu is perfectly located for convenience and quality. Ha! As the Coopers say, Chocolate is Aloha. Address: 1450 Ala Moana Blvd, Ala Moana Center, Honolulu, HI 96814, USA, A post shared by Big Island Candies (@bigislandcandies) on Mar 20, 2019 at 9:30am PDT.
We learn that after they are fermented and dried, the beans are burlap bagged and stored for a few years. You can find more information about the tours on their website. Its also one of the only places in the world where you can buy bars of tree to bar Hawaiian chocolate, crafted by a true expert. thanks . If you travel to Europe and try the finer chocolates there, none of the chocolates you have there will have American grown or Hawaiian grown beans. Despite low inventory, Hawaii is still the best place in America to learn about chocolate. Their 110 acre farm is home to 1,200+ cacao trees and is located just north of Hilo (2.5 miles) with spectacular views of Hilo Bay.
Hawaiian Crown also has a shop on the Big Island, very close to their farm outside of Hilo, which you can tour for $15 a person on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays at 2pm. READ MORE. I'm sorry, I'm really plugged into the chocolate scene, but I've never heard of that brand. However, since the shop is a little hard to find, they also have an online store you can browse.
On a cacao farm tour youll learn the steps of chocolate making, the culture of Hawaiian cacao, and how making chocolate on Hawaii contributes to keeping local farming sustainable. You can find out more about the farm tour and make your booking on the Puna Gold Estate website. Were not adverse to making a lot of chocolate but we choose not to import any beans whatsoever from offshore, so we dont have that luxury. They do also have a line of single origin chocolates made with cacao from off the islands, but I didnt have a chance to try any of those.