On the Chocolate Trail

Mark and I met Charles (Chuck) Siegel, one of the sweetest guys in the sweet business of chocolate, at the New York Chocolate Show in 2007.  We then visited his store and factory in December, 2007, when he not only showed us around his expansive kitchens then in 
Emeryville but also generously loaded us up with samples to give away at my lecture that night at the Magnes Museum in Berkeley.  If that were not enough, he also has a sweet family story:

Charles met his wife over chocolate covered matzah!

When Charles ran his first chocolate company, Attibo, one of his venders, a Jewish guy with a second grader in a local Jewish day school, asked a favor:  Could he bring his daughter by the Attibo factory to dip matzah in chocolate which she would then bring to her class to share?  Charles said yes and each year it became a bigger and bigger party.  Eventually, he started selling chocolate covered matzah at Pesach/Passover.  (Note:  It was kosher for Passover matzah but not kosher chocolate.)

An English born woman, who happened to have one Jewish and one Muslim parent, working for a trading company in the Bay Area, placed an order for the chocolate matzah.  Her order did not arrive so she called the company on Erev Pesach, desperate to have it as a gift she was bringing to a Seder.  The attendants in the shop told her it could only be shipped.  She persisted.  Since she was in San Francisco and Charles was also in San Francisco, he delivered the order on the way to his own Seder.  Then, after that she called the store regularly, everyday.  After a couple of weeks or so, he realized that maybe she was interested in him, not just the matzah, so he asked her out and they were married eleven months later.  After 16 years, they have two daughters and he now runs Charles Chocolates out of a retail location in San Francisco.

Mark and I have also met his parents, who often help out at the food shows.  His  mother shared with  us that when Charles was very young, maybe three, they thought he might have a hearing problem.  However, one night when he was upstairs and supposedly asleep, she whispered to her husband downstairs, “Would you like a piece of chocolate?” …and Charles, yelled down to them,  “Yes, I  want one!”

And now he has many….