The Chocolate Roots Run Deep at Vesta Chocolate
Located in an old bank building, Vesta Chocolate’s shop in Upper Montclair is what chocoholic dreams are made of. Inside the black metal door, you’ll be greeted by an elegant display of bean-to-bar chocolate and barks, colorful bonbons, and organic spreads. You’ll likely leave with a perfectly chewy chocolate chip cookie and, perhaps, a mocha. You’ll fall hard for the brownies, which are so lightly sweetened you’ll think of them as breakfast food. After scraping the last crumb off your plate, you know you’ll return for more.
The brainchild of Roger Rodriguez and Julia Choi-Rodriguez (pictured, left), Vesta Chocolate opened in January 2020, a month after the couple celebrated their wedding in Dominican Republic. After a very successful Valentine’s Day, when customers wiped the store’s inventory clean, the shop abruptly closed the following month when the pandemic hit. The forced closure could have been the end of Vesta Chocolate, but the couple held on.
“It was do or die,” says Roger. “Julia whipped up a website in two days.”
Online sales took off and helped sustain the shop into 2021.
As the unofficial Chief Chocolate Officer of Vesta Chocolate, Roger defines himself as a “chef who cooks and makes stuff with chocolate.” Where most professionals in his field specialize in just one aspect of chocolate work (pastry, for instance,) Roger is a well-rounded craftsman who can turn cacao beans into chocolate and chocolate into bonbons and cakes.
Sophia Contreras Rea, a chocolate sommelier and founder of Projet Chocolat, a company dedicated to elevating the culture and enjoyment of chocolate, agrees. “One of the things I love about Roger,” she says, “is that he combines the technical knowledge of a chocolate-maker and the artistic sensibility of a chocolatier when he combines flavors.”
VESTA CHOCOLATE’S WIDE RANGE OF COMFORTING TREATS RELIES ON ORGANIC CACAO SOURCED FROM BELIZE, GUATEMALA, AND, OF COURSE, THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC.
Roger’s chocolate roots run deep, as he grew up around his grandfather’s cacao farm in the Dominican Republic. He remembers being surrounded by cacao pods, which he describes as “giant footballs hanging on a tree.” He keeps strong ties with his homeland, where one of his grandmothers and his father’s family still live.
After moving to New Jersey as a teenager, Roger learned pastry and baking at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan, then pursued a career in pastry at Michelin-starred restaurants Gramercy Tavern and Del Posto in New York City, where he showed an innate talent for taming chocolate.
“Most pastry chefs at the time didn’t know how to work with chocolate,” he says. “It’s temperamental, but for me it was easy.”
Being the sole chocolate whisperer in the kitchen gave Roger the freedom to make his own schedule, which encouraged him to keep learning. But as his knowledge grew, so did his frustration for the lack of diversity in the commercial chocolate available to chefs across the city.
“I started realizing that no matter how different the recipe is, someone else was using the same chocolate,” he recalls. One way to stand out was to start making his own.
After some sleuthing, Roger sourced a selection of beans from Cacao Prieto’s rum distillery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, which was using cacao beans from the Dominican Republic to make cacao liquor. He experimented with different ways to grind the cacao, including a few he “wasn’t proud of” (i.e. using BB gun pellets) and, after a couple of weeks, he was making not just chocolate, but good chocolate. The chocolate-making continued at Del Posto’s kitchen, where he shared samples with his coworkers. His chocolate eventually caught the chef ’s attention and made it onto the menu.
Roger’s all-consuming passion ultimately prompted him to leave the restaurant world to fully commit to chocolate in 2014, when he became a partner and head chocolate-maker at Cacao Prieto. Over the following five years, he honed his craft by working with Dominican cacao beans and developing a series of bars inspired by the flavors of his homeland, such as orchid, vanilla, and cassia.
THE PINEAPPLE AND RAISIN NOTES IN THE BELIZE BAR? THEY COME STRAIGHT FROM THE CACAO BEANS.
It was during this time that he met his now-wife, Julia, a freelance food stylist with a background in advertising. As they imagined their married life, Roger and Julia dreamed of leaving the city and opening their own chocolate business.
They didn’t suspect it then, but that dream would materialize almost overnight.
A former resident of Clifton, Roger knew the appeal of neighboring Montclair. He suggested to Julia they explore the town and, during a car drive, a “for lease” sign by the old bank building caught Roger’s eye.
The landlord met the couple that day and questioned them about their plans. The idea of a chocolate shop appealed to him.
“He was, like, ‘OK, fine, come and sign the lease tomorrow,’” Roger recalls. “He didn’t check financials, credit, nothing.”
The couple signed the lease the next day and Vesta Chocolate opened six months later.
As the CEO of Vesta Chocolate, Julia has a clear vision for the business.
“I want to bridge the gap between quality craft chocolate and consumers,” she says. “People come into a bean-to-bar shop because they want to buy a gift, they don’t buy something for themselves.” Julia wants to change that. Including familiar items like chocolate chip cookies and brownies in Vesta Chocolate’s product line encourages locals to incorporate a chocolate shop visit to their daily ritual.
“Some people come every day after lunch at 2 o’clock to get a chocolate chip cookie and a coffee,” Julia says.
She sees Vesta Chocolate as a welcoming place for all chocolate-lovers, be they a dark-chocolate afficionado or an everyday dessert lover.
Roger respects and appreciates the vision.
“I just do what I’m told,” he says. “Julia has an idea and I make those ideas come true.”
Occasionally, though, Roger will show some resistance.
“There was no way I was going to make a brownie,” admits the classically trained chef. “I wanted to make something that required more skills.”
Now, Roger crafts the shop’s bestselling pastry using Vesta Chocolate’s 72% Dominican Republic dark chocolate, then mixes the batter by hand and sprinkles it with lightly roasted cacao nibs and a touch of salt. The result is a phenomenal, melt-in-your-mouth brownie.
Vesta Chocolate’s wide range of comforting treats relies on organic cacao sourced from Belize, Guatemala, and, of course, the Dominican Republic. Until the beginning of the pandemic, the couple traveled to cacao origin countries to meet their farmers and check the quality of the beans.
“What sets Roger apart from anyone else is that he’s from the Dominican Republic,” Julia says. “It plays a huge role in understanding the cacao and the farmers.”
Roger agrees. “I know when farmers put up a show. You cannot do that with me.”
The frequent visits also gave the couple a sense of responsibility toward the farmers who did their part of the work, namely growing the trees and harvesting the pods.
“You represent these people,” says Roger, “and if you do a poor job making a chocolate bar, now you represent an entire country.”
An encounter with a 70-year-old cacao farmer particularly stands out to Julia. “He literally looks at a moon and can tell if the pods are ripe,” she recalls. “I think having relationships with farmers like that not only helps us… it pushes us to put out a good product because other people are putting out their A game.”
Vesta Chocolate’s bars are made using organic cacao beans and panela, an unrefined cane sugar popular across Latin America. Try them side-by-side to appreciate the variety of flavors in each origin. The pineapple and raisin notes in the Belize bar? They come straight from the cacao beans.
While some cacao origins stand better on their own, Roger and Julia favor Dominican cacao because of its subtle fruitiness and ability to play well with others.
“It’s kind of a girl next door,” according to Julia. “It goes well with anything.”
At the Upper Montclair shop, you’ll taste cacao in many forms, ranging from nibs and chocolate to baking chips and drinks. Oh, and don’t fear the 100% cacao chocolate made only with Dominican cacao beans and no sugar—it’s much sweeter than you think.
Ultimately, Roger and Julia want Vesta Chocolate to feel like home, both for them and their customers.
“Vesta is the Roman goddess of hearth,” explains Julia. “She’s a keeper of home and family. In the Roman times, she was the only goddess allowed to be worshipped in every home. It sounded like something like we wanted to bring.”
Vesta Chocolate
598 Valley Road, Upper Montclair
973.860.7136 vestachocolate.com
HOW TO ENJOY CHOCOLATE
As the founder of Barometer Chocolate, Nadine Kerstan invites her clients to discover the myriad flavors in chocolate. Her online shop offers a thoughtful selection of bean-to-bar chocolate, and her in-person and virtual tasting experiences are designed to help attendees relish high-quality chocolate “with mindful intention.”
The chocolate sommelier shares with us her ritual to make the most of each square:
“Savoring chocolate is a daily celebration for me. I begin by choosing a piece or two of chocolate that suits my palate’s mood. Next, I select a tasting plate with intention. (I have many beautiful dishes dedicated to chocolate tasting!) I enjoy a moment of gratitude, and reflect on the elements, animals, insects, and people that helped to create the chocolate set before me. Finally, I snap the chocolate by my ear, breathe in the aroma, take a bite or two, and allow the blissful flavor evolution to carry me away!”
WHAT IS BEAN-TO-BAR?
“The bean-to-bar movement refers to the process of making chocolate from cacao beans with a focus on quality, flavor, and ethics,” explains Megan Giller, author of Bean-to-Bar Chocolate: America’s Craft Chocolate Revolution [Storey Publishing, 2017]. While industrial chocolate manufacturers are interested in consistency, craft chocolate emphasizes quality, focusing on the best ingredients that makers can find, namely cacao fermented and dried with care.” In her book, Giller further describes bean-to-bar as “chocolate made from scratch by one company, starting with whole beans. This usually includes buying, roasting, grinding, and refining the beans in a single facility.”
MORE CHOCOLATE, PLEASE
Continue your chocolate journey with one of the following purveyors in New Jersey.
CHOCOLATE-MAKERS
Crafting their own bean-to-bar chocolate
Josh Chocolates
joshchocolates.com
Look for Josh at pop-up events and at the West Orange Farmers’ Market
Vesta Chocolate
598 Valley Road, Upper Montclair
973.860.7136
vestachocolate.com
CHOCOLATE SHOPS
Offering a wide array of fine-quality chocolate showcasing the many flavors of cacao
Barometer Chocolate
barometerchocolate.com
Free pickup and delivery in South Orange
Louisa’s Chocolate Bar
106 Jackson St., Cape May
louisascapemay.com/chocolatebar
