More and more research shows that chocolate is good for you. It's a mood elevator. It contains a lot of antioxidants and will keep us younger. It's good for your heart and acts like aspirin. It keeps your cholesterol low.
The good thing is, the season of chocolates is during the cold months. During the cold months, I can send ground.
In 2004, we opened our first store in Manhattan. I installed a big window so people could see me making the chocolates. That store cost $1.8 million. It has a 45-foot-long chocolate counter and a hot chocolate bar made in Louis XVI style because that's when chocolate arrived in Europe.
Dark chocolate can be good for you, and when I say 'can,' it's about what type of dark chocolates are you eating. Don't eat the dark chocolate with too much sugar.
I come from a family of craftsmen. We like to make things with our hands. Better than the pleasure of making money is the pleasure of making the product and saying, 'Wow. I did that.' I couldn't see myself doing anything other than making good things to eat.
You can easily compare chocolate to wine. What makes a good wine is usually a good terroir, a good grape, and the weather has something to do with it. Chocolate is the same, from where the cacao bean grows to what type of tree it grows on.
It take me one year to lose all that weight. Look, it takes a long time to put it in; it takes a long time to take it off. It's a struggle in the beginning, and then you get used to it. I work also with a nutritionist, and she helped me. She became a friend.
Pierre Franey's producer wanted to do a show with me. This was around 1998, and I think we shot our first PBS show that same year.
