In the latest issue of Slice

Fresh enthusiasm

by David Tossman

Bohemein Fresh Chocolates in Wellington, formerly Melting Perfection, opened in 2005 and was recently renamed to further its services and image.

A Bohemian is a resident of the former Kingdom of Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic. “Bohemein = fresh chocolates!” says the business’s website.

Jiri Havlik (George) is chocolatier, founder and director.

Like many immigrants, Wellington chocolatier Jiří Havlík has changed his first name. He prefers to be known as George rather than hear New Zealanders mangle the Czech original.

He is fussy like that, seeking perfection, spurning compromise.

 George-Havlik.jpg

First love

I asked him how he got into chocolate.

“I loved it since I was 12 years old,” he said. “My brother used to work as a baker in Belgium and when I was 12 he invited us for a visit and took me where he was working, and the guy there who was doing cakes and bread also had a little corner where he made chocolate. He made bunnies the size of me and Easter eggs and so on and I tried it and I thought ‘wow this is so cool’.”

Back home in the Czech Republic, George went on to become a pastry chef but his special interest in chocolate remained. “Chocolate decorations go hand-in-hand with pastry but there wasn't much training on chocolate itself so I purchased books that I learnt from.”

George's first job after completing his pastry chef apprenticeship was in his brother-in-law's bakery. There he started “nagging” as he puts it, until eventually his brother-in-law started doing some serious chocolate work as well.

Because of their connections in Belgium they were able to get some good moulds.

 Havlik2.jpg

The breakthrough

George recalls the first mould they bought: a little Eiffel Tower. At the time they were making a product they called Paris cake. It was, he says, “quite plain – just mousse covered in chocolate and a few cream roses on top.” When they added the chocolate tower, sales took off. They had trouble keeping up with demand. They bought another mould, a squirrel, and put that on their hazelnut cake. Again, says George, sales shot up.

His brother-in-law's business changed from then on, moving away from pastry and the café idea to specialise in chocolate. Now with 16 chocolate stores around the Czech Republic, George’s brother-in-law uses several tonnes of chocolate per week.

Love undimmed

 George's love affair with chocolate continues undimmed. “Chocolate is such a great medium: you can use it in savoury, you can use it in sweet, you can use it in show pieces. There's no end to it. Or you can use part of it: the cocoa for baking or the butter for savoury cooking. Or you can replace the butter when making mousses. It's got so many uses it's almost scary.”

He puts chocolate makers at the top of a status list (which he hastens to add is not really serious) with pastry chefs lower and chefs at the bottom. What really appeals to George is the precision chocolate demands. “That's the way I like it,” he says. “I like to be perfect.”

“You've got to be onto it the whole time. There's no 'she'll be right'. You make a mistake in tempering your chocolate and it might look OK at the time, but in two weeks’ time it will be all grey and horrible and you can't use it at all, so your output always has to be 100 percent.”

“Also you're playing with small doses of flavour. You just have to be perfect. You have a badly made caramel and people will know it straight away. With a cake icing you can get away with a bit more.”

Perfectibility aside, chocolate making has other advantages over baking from George's point of view, most notably in time management. You don't have to work constantly unsocial hours. The stock remains fresh for two to three weeks (or even months with factory-made commercial chocolate).

“It's not as panicky as baking,” says George. Nevertheless he was starting work at 2am to build up stock in the weeks before Easter. He also he points out that many of the products take several days to complete and finish so careful planning and preparation is essential.

 The big move

George came to New Zealand in 1999 and first went to see a baker his brother had previously worked for, Peter Gray at Nada Bakery in Wellington. Peter Gray didn't have a vacancy at the time but clearly he liked the Havliks and referred George on to his close friend and fellow-baker Graham Heaven in Napier.

George stayed at Heaven's Bakery for only seven months. He remains grateful to Jason Heaven for putting up with his then-very-limited English (it is now fluent and almost accentless) and letting him go without fuss. George's wife-to-be Hana had arrived and was keen to settle in Wellington where her nursing qualifications would stand her in better stead.

George still misses “back home.” He has gone back a few times and seen some changes and improvements, but he is very happy with what New Zealand has done for him. “The opportunities in New Zealand are so much greater than back home. What I achieved here in 10 years would have taken me 30 to 40 back home. And you've got only one life so why not try it?

“What I love about New Zealand is the simple fact that if you try hard you're going to get results, whereas back home, if you don't have connections or money, no matter how hard you try, nothing will happen. And then there's the nature and the cleanliness.

The market

High quality chocolate is not widely known yet in New Zealand so “you need to educate a lot. Things that are taken for granted in Europe, like what is a truffle, have to be explained to customers quite clearly.”

George bemoans the fact that New Zealand doesn’t have a culture of chocolatiers in the manner of France, Belgium or his native Czech Republic. As a result the market here allows some artisan chocolate makers to get away with sub-standard work. There are many New Zealand chocolate makers out there saying “we're doing the right thing” but, says George, it's not true. He tries to put it mildly. “I sometimes get a bit disappointed. Some of these companies have been here for some time and have unfortunately established a standard and people seek that standard. But it's not a high standard.”

George is nevertheless prepared to acknowledge some good New Zealand chocolate makers, naming some half a dozen around the country.

The future

Bohemein products currently sell through three retail outlets: a classy shop in Wellington's downtown Featherston Street, a tiny one at the front of his workshop in inner-suburban Hataitai, and Moore Wilson's Fresh, the Wellington gourmet supermarket, which carries both loose chocolates and his premium boxed product. He has been in Moore Wilson's for only seven months but is clearly pleased with the response.

He sees a need to diversify because gourmet presentation chocolates are very seasonal, selling largely as gifts at Christmas and Easter.

George now plans to “play in the area of decorations” making, for example chocolate cigarillos, for the wider catering, baking and pastry trade. He recognises that most bakers and pastry chefs have the skills but says they don't always have the time and the space. There's also a degree of wastage that can be avoided with pre-made decorations.

The emphasis, as with all his work, is on quality, starting with the best ingredients. “I want to do all those things out of good chocolate. There's nothing worse than having a good cake and having not-so-good chocolate on it. It's like having a good salad and putting a bad dressing on it.”

He has started on an almost experimental basis at the retail level, putting some chocolate decorations – cigarillos, dessert cups, shavings and suchlike – through Moore Wilson's Fresh. “And people like it. Just the general public!”

He will be going up against some good imported product in the trade market, however, he says “I've got nothing against the Dutch, but should you bring it across the world when you can make the same thing with the same quality here?”

He also sees some edge in targeting the typically small bakeries in New Zealand (compared with their European counterparts), offering products in packages of 30 or 100 rather than cartons of 500. “New Zealand-friendly,” he calls it.

George has recently innovated with a clever little folding package – no glue – that he's supplying to hotels. They place them on guest pillows.

It's a small, competitive high-volume-small-margin market but one with obvious potential. In another novel touch, the classy little Museum Hotel in Wellington presents guests with two Bohemein chocolate coins, one black, one gold, in line with the décor.

George is proud of that idea.