Salty Sweet

Stay Sweet SF: San Francisco’s Next Great Chocolatier Has Arrived | Eater SF

"The operation began as a tiny, home-based headquarters inside a 10-by-10-foot cave at his mother’s house after he struck out on his own in December 2024. He describes his mother’s push as: “She would always tell me to stop working so hard for someone else’s dream and invest in my own.” Selling seven kinds of bars, his roster includes signature items such as a popular shiitake mushroom chocolate bar and a Karl the Fog bar that “tastes like a coffee caramel medley with notes as deep as a San Francisco fog bank.” He uses farmers’ market produce (for Chinese New Year he bought mandarins at the Ferry Building for an orange marmalade bar) and says bluntly, “What I want to create more than ever is a very California, San Francisco product. I don’t see that in chocolate right now.” His background includes a rigorous run in fine dining — pastry stints at Saison, the Wild (formerly Gozu), and Sorrel, savory work at Meadowood, and stages at high-profile kitchens — and that résumé helped him land pop-up opportunities: his first pop-ups were at Pacifica’s Craftsman Coffee (May 2024), and he’s sold through Golden Goat Coffee in SoMa and Breadbelly in the Outer Richmond. A Valentine’s Day pop-up at a florist across the street from one of his former restaurants netted 10 boxes sold between 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., one of which went to a San Francisco Chronicle critic whose write-up rhapsodized his strawberries-and-cream and raspberry-pink peppercorn-marshmallow bonbons; the attention sent him on “quite the rollercoaster.” Operating under cottage-business licensing lets him grow the nascent brand without taking on a risky retail rent, though he dreams of a small Chinatown storefront to appeal to tourists. Branding nods to Chinese knots meant to invoke good luck. At the beginning of April he cleaned up at the annual San Francisco Chocolate Salon in Golden Gate Park, taking home six out of nine People’s Choice Awards from attendees and two golds from the judges. He remains proud yet cautious: “Everybody always tells me I do good work,” he says. “But there’s always that fear in the back of your mind. You’re like ‘Can I do this? Is this really working? Is this happening?’”" - Paolo Bicchieri