What Lies Beneath the Berets: Part 1
This story was originally published on April 1, 2016 (aka, April Fool's Day).
Late last year, in December 2015, it came to light that Brooklyn darlings Rick and Michael Mast had remelted Valrhona chocolate and passed it off as their own bean-to-bar creations.
Now a French whistleblower who wishes to remain anonymous has revealed that for about four years around that time, Valrhona was actually buying as much Mast Brothers chocolate as it could get its hands on and remelting it into bars that it sold as “fancy French chocolate.” If you bought a bar of Valrhona or a truffle from a snobby chocolatier from 2007 to 2011, you were actually eating artisan chocolate made in the Masts’ tiny apartment that had been "accidentally" shipped to France, remelted, and then sold as Valrhona's own.
I reached out to Valrhona, which had this to say: “Mon dieu! Pomplamousse. Putain—er, purée.”
They assured me that they recognized the mistake within one millisecond of putting a piece of chocolate in their mouth.
Stay tuned for Parts 2 through 4, where I rehash the same thing in excruciating detail.
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