Carolina Quijano’s Exquisito Chocolates is Miami’s first chocolate factory. Located at Little Havana (right by the “Welcome to Little Havana” mural and Calle Ocho rooster sculpture), it opened its doors last May 2018. Carolina was born in Miami, raised in Baranquilla, Colombia (where her family is from), and then went to University of Miami before taking on a management consulting job in New York, in which role she traveled 150,000 miles a year! On a trip to Paris in 2011, she fell in love with handmade hot chocolate in Montmartre. She then tried replicating the recipe every day until 3 AM for the next year and a half. Her love for chocolates won, and she eventually left her corporate job, moved back to Miami and with her savings, opened her own chocolate place.
Today, Exquisito is a bean-to-bar company that not only does single origin chocolate, but also single estate chocolate, working with one farm at at time, and particularly those that pay their workers fairly and grow their trees sustainably. They source their cacao from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala and Haiti, and everything is crafted in Miami. (Interestingly, when I went to visit, she had a Belize sample, and its taste profile was so similar to the Philippine cacao!) Carolina doesn’t use additives— the only thing she adds is unrefined cane sugar. Her cocoa concentrations are high, at least 73% for dark chocolate. (Some commercial chocolate brands use only 15 to 34%, often swapping cocoa with additives, and then loosely labeling them as “dark chocolate.”)
She also recycles all of the cocoa husks. (Cocoa husks are a waste material from cocoa production. For every metric ton of dry cocoa bean produced, there are 10 tons of husks leftover as waste. ) Lincoln’s Beard Brewery has started using them as a mash in their beers. Exquisito has also begun steeping these into teas.
There is a growing craft chocolate movement in the United States, and Carolina likens this to the craft beer phenomenon several years ago. “We’re starting to see chocolate follow in the footsteps of craft coffee and craft beer, where people are learning exactly where those products come from and how they’re being made. People love chocolate but have very little knowledge about where it comes from, and we’d love to see a movement to where people take an active part in knowing where the chocolate comes from, and the value of high quality chocolate to support cacao farms.”
Carolina is certainly doing her part by extending her personal knowledge and skills by offering chocolate tours and truffle-making sessions. If you have 1 to 1.5 hours to spare, I highly recommend you going on it. It’s a wonderful hands-on introduction to the world of Latin American cacao and how quality chocolate is made with love and passion. Exquisito has two kinds of tours: the Chocolate Factory Tour and Tasting ($15), and the Chocolate Factory Tour, Tasting AND Truffle-Making Session ($40–yes, you can take the truffles home, and you’re encouraged to BYOB, too!)
You can taste Exquisito chocolates at their retail space at the factory (craft bars are $8; truffles are $2 per piece, or $12 for a box of 6; and they have other specialty products), and they also ship to anywhere in the United States. My personal favorite craft bar is the one from Peru’s Maranon region, which is often touted as one of the rarest beans in the world because they were thought to have disappeared in 1919 from a disease.
Exquisito also supplies some of Miami’s top hotels, restaurants and ice cream shops: The Four Seasons, Marriott, The Confidante Hotel, Edge Steak Bar, West Elm, Azucar Ice Cream, Sweet Melody Ice Cream, Dasher and Crank, Lulu’s Nitrogen, Lincoln’s Beard Brewery, The Salty Donut, among others. And the list is growing!
Exquisito’s last FOUR upcoming chocolate tours for the year: November 10 (1-2PM), November 11 (2-3:30PM), December 1 (1-2PM) and December 2 (2-3:30PM). Book your tickets online here!
Exquisito Chocolates is located at 2606 SW 8th Street, Little Havana, Miami. (*There is public parking on either side of 8th Street.) For more information, visit <exquisitochocolates.com>, phone +1 (786) 558-4580, or email <info@exquisitochocolates.com>.
