A pointer from a geek cryptically known as Vorlonish Dances with Postscript led today to the following article on the Dallas Food blog. It's all about a vanity chocolatier called Nōka, who sells the most exclusive ... er, make that most expensive ... um, OK, the most overpriced chocolate in the world.
Nōka is exposed in a ten-part piece of sleuthing. You can find the beginning of the arrticle here and follow the links, or jump directly to parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.
The Nōka hype is that "Four years ago, while standing on a mountaintop in Switzerland, a pair of Canadian accountants, Katrina Merrem and Noah Houghton, decided to leave the ledgers behind and enter the world of gourmet chocolate." They claim that they make and sell "real chocolate, in its rarest and purest form, unadulterated by vanilla and any other flavorings."
This claim is analyzed, deconstructed, and shown to be not only deceptive even if the claims underlying it were true, but based upon lies and half-truths in the first place. Nōka does not, in point of fact, make any chocolate at all. They are a chocolatier, not a chocolate-maker — and apparently not a very good one. (As witnessed by photos of brand-new product with surface bloom that they apparently just didn't care about.) They buy middle-of-the-pack bulk chocolate off-the-shelf from French chocolate-maker Bonnat, do a mediocre and amateurish job of pouring it into tiny billets packed in extravagant boxes, mark it up by as much as several THOUSAND percent, then just sit back and watch the money roll in (in the hands of suckers to whom the nouveau-riche maxim of "The more it costs, the better it must be" makes perfect sense).
Dallas Food finishes up with the following summary:
An individual's passion for chocolate could be expressed through a number of commercial avenues. One avenue would be to become involved in the production of chocolate from the bean, as a number of enterprising souls across America are doing. Another would be to study, train, and apprentice in the chocolatier's art, mastering necessary techniques and developing good taste and judgment, as so many chocolatiers I've referenced in these reports have done. Another would be to open a specialty shop (online and/or bricks & mortar) to make available to the public the products of quality chocolate makers and chocolatiers. Any business like that would be welcome in Dallas. But that's not Nōka.
Katrina Merrem has often spoken of the epiphany she had on a Swiss mountaintop — the moment in which her career goals turned from accounting to the world of chocolate. What must that inner monologue have sounded like?
You know, accounting's a drag. It's time to pursue something genuine and fulfilling.
Maybe I could buy some French-made chocolate, trick people into believing I made it myself, melt it down and mold it into tiny rectangular tablets, stick them in over-sized boxes, slap on a ridiculously high price tag, and sell to that segment of the population who fallaciously believe that price is necessarily commensurate with value.
Or I could join the Peace Corps.
Nah, the chocolate thing sounds way more fulfilling.
I don't see passion or talent in Nōka. Just hollow opportunism and Sneetchcraft.
And you know? I think that sums it up pretty well.