Hong Kong's artisan chocolatiers on a flavour quest

Cheung Hon-fai always looked forward to Lunar New Year. "I didn't come from a well-off family, but as a treat my mother used to take me to a traditional Chinese confectionary shop and bought me a block of solid chocolate big enough that I had to break it with my hands to eat it. I only got to try it once a year, but it was so good," he says.

Those memories are so vivid for Cheung that after a 20-year career in quality testing he decided to take a plunge into the chocolate business and set up Haute Chocolat two months ago.

In his Kowloon Bay test kitchen, the youthful 52-year-old feels like Willy Wonka, creating chocolates of different flavours and designs. With a background in material science, he equates making chocolates to that of metallurgy, where the combination of ingredients needs to be precise and the process done correctly. However, chocolate is both a science and an art that appeals to the five senses - something Cheung aims for in his creations.

While he focuses mainly on corporate clients such as Uniqlo and Longchamp, Cheung also has a small stall in Food Garden, a gourmet shop in D2 Place, a mall converted from an industrial building in Lai Chi Kok. There his son Solomon sells freshly made chocolates.

"Chocolate must be eaten fresh, much like tea. You don't drink day-old tea, you make a fresh batch. And with coffee, you grind the beans when you want a cup," Cheung says.

For Haute Chocolat, Cheung sources ingredients from around the world and semi-roasts the nuts for his confections to prevent them from going rancid. The macadamia nuts are golden brown and covered with a dark chocolate shell, while Cheung's latest creation, ganache with rosewater, has a subtle taste similar to Turkish delight, but it's nowhere near as saccharine.

Another creation is the fan-shaped matcha (green tea powder) chocolate, while the cherry bullet is a kirsch-infused wild cherry covered in 65 per cent cacao butter Belgian chocolate.