His homeland marked his life purpose. This is how Ecuadorian Susana Cárdenas A. perceives the path that led her to found Cardenas Chocolatea brand with a five-year track record and high international projection that finds its raw material on a family plantation in Chone, Manabí province.
With various awards achieved, the also UK based journalist ensures that the Combining the letters as part of his gastronomic project helped empower him. “As journalists, we do not leave any word, fact or circumstance without being fully supported,” she commented in an interview for this newspaper. “And that is what has allowed us to create chocolate in such detail, we can offer its traceability, its story from beginning to end and without my training as a journalist it would not have been possible for me to spin so fine”, he maintains.
With a variety of bars, including one of pure cocoa, Cárdenas and his team intend to include in their product only what is part of the national identity: mango, brown salt, Jipijapa coffee, Andean fruits, etc. “The combinations are totally Ecuadorian. We are not going to use pistachios, if we do not produce pistachios; we are not going to use olives, if we do not produce olives here”.
Weeks ago, Susana was visiting the Pearl of the Pacific accompanied by the teacher chocolatier British Kerry Witt who in his first visit to Latin America offered a master class in The School of Chefs From Guayaquil.
Tell me the story behind Cárdenas Chocolate.
It arose in 2017 when I went to study a master’s degree (Business for Entrepreneur) at the University of Cambridge (England). It was born as a different and fresh concept that in some way was very strongly solidified with all this group of very bright people who were at the university and who found it very interesting that an Ecuadorian woman lead a chocolate and cocoa initiative. They found it innovative and they told me that what I had was gold, because it was also about carrying the flag of my country.
Your palate has tried chocolates from all over the world, what do you highlight about ours?
National cocoa is part of the Ecuadorian identity because it is connected with history, with sociology, with botany, with all that wonderful universe of people who are behind each cocoa bean, each tree they harvest and care for, and That human side influences me a lot.
In which countries is Cárdenas Chocolate currently located?
We have focused to start in the United Kingdom because of my relationship with this, my other country. We also began to sell in Switzerland, in a very exclusive store of original chocolates, something that also filled me with emotion to be able to plant the Ecuadorian flag in a country that is par excellence a chocolatier. We are in France, Spain and some independent stores in Germany.
During these years, how do you reconsider your goals with each recognition received?
Prizes help, they are a tool I would say more than marketing, prestige, credibility and it is only a link in everything we do. I think the strongest competition is with ourselves and with being able to raise that level to the highest point every year. We handle our chocolate with annual harvests, each bar comes from a specific plantation of my mother’s family and we make it at the peak of the year’s harvest, between January and February. So, our goal is always to raise each harvest, although each harvest is diverse and nature is going to influence the type of cacao that we are going to harvest that year.
What is it like to carry the name of Ecuador and its flag abroad?
It is definitely a pride and it is a privilege. I never thought that my background was going to be so essential in what I do today. I lived for more than a decade in Europe and when I returned to Ecuador I thought I would be passing through, but who would have thought that I would have the purpose of rescuing and restoring glory to an area where there is a very strong link with the origin of my family. And it’s really nice to see all these people who feel somehow vindicated and valued, because each grain harvested with such care by all that wonderful team elevates them and elevates us all.
In Ecuador, Cárdenas Chocolate is for sale at Ecuagourmet (Las Terrazas) and Urban Market (Plaza Lagos).
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
