Yuki MIYASHITA : Artichoke Chocolate

“Agriculture constitutes major part of chocolate making process. We wish to create chocolate that can identify the cacao farmer.”

At the back of the contemporary art museum after passing through the Museum Street, there is a store that can be mistaken for a sundry shop or a gallery. Mum’s with children stop seeing the potted plants and display in the front. The owner, Mr. Yuuki Miyashita, tells me, “this sloth figure is made of chocolate.” Yes, this is a chocolate shop.

Touched by the cake of a pastry shop that opened in the neighborhood, he aimed to open a pastry shop when he was still a high school student. He was shocked by the chocolates from France and Belgium that he saw at the vocational school, and at the same time he knew that the chocolate that are sold at supermarkets are not all.

On the other hand, the more he knew about it, the more he came to see the limitations of the confectionery industry. There are only a few companies handling cocoa which is the raw material of chocolate, and even unique-looking chocolate had the same origin of cacao and the same formulation. All tasted the same, and Mr. Miyashita wondered what could the role and significance of a chocolate craftsman be.

Once, he met in New York a shop that handled all the way from purchasing cocoa to manufacturing and selling of chocolate. By handling from stocking, formulation can be tweaked according to the original taste of cacao. He mastered all the processes of making chocolate from cacao and continued his research until he opened Artichoke Chocolate in 2015.

“Most of the chocolate making process is agriculture,” says Mr. Miyashita. A brown tablet is not born abruptly from the factory. There are people who water the cacao trees, grow beans and harvest. Different flavors and scents are produced depending on variety and local origin. Artichoke Chocolate conveys the voice of bean producers and lets people know the charm of chocolate again.

Company and Showroom Informations

ADDRESS: 1F 4-9-6 Miyoshi, Koto, Tokyo, Japan
OPEN: 11:00am-7:00pm *irregular holidays
URL: https://www.artichoke.tokyo/
☎︎ +81 3-6458-5678