Peep into Willy Wonka’s world

Imaginea Wonka-esque land made of the finest dark chocolate; streams of Brazilian chocolate, chocolate dollops from Tanzania and Ecuador, from Grenada and Madagascar — all leading to a giant waterfall of dark brown. Brown butterfies dotting the ceiling; chocolate rabbits and cars filling the streets. Your favourite sports person made of chocolate and even your favourite actor. There is one man who has brought almost all this to life.

Puducherry-based Srinath Balachandran has turned his love for all things chocolate to an enterprise: Zuka. As a child, he would wonder why chocolates were the first things people would ask their friends to get back home from their travels abroad, but the friend abroad never wanted chocolates from India. But that’s not the only reason he chose this line of work. “I came into the chocolate line because my mother would hide all the chocolates from me,” he quips.

When he decided to open shop in 2009, it was only natural for Balachandran to do it in Puducherry, given the city’s French influences. His outlet looks like a tiny box-like space with just two tables.

Keep experimenting

If there’s one constant at his shop, it is the incessant experimenting; a good example of which are his chocolate statues.

In his open-to-all outlet in the city in Mylapore, he displayed a life-size statue of Rajinikanth, followed by Charlie Chaplin and MS Dhoni in the years to come. His first chocolate shop in Chennai was actually in the campus of AR Rahman’s KM Conservatory. “Rahman visited our Puducherry outlet and asked me to come to the college for the Annual Day. So I came here in 2015, during which time he showed me a space and asked me to open a branch of Zuka there,” says Balachandar who also flirted with playback singing as a career which was when he got aquainted with Rahman.

What overpowers all else is his need to create unimaginable flavours and products that amaze his customers. “When I was doing my training in France back in 2006, one of the chefs there asked me how much chocolate I procure annually. I had started procuring 400 kilograms per annum and to me that was very big,” he says. When he bragged about the same to the chef, he got an off-hand reply that they procured almost 11 tonnes per annum. Now Balachandran proudly says, “We use about seven and a half tonnes per month between the two Zuka cafés.”

There are certain customers that keep coming back for something absolutely unpopular with others.

“It’s very difficult to understand what a customer would like and streamline products. We learnt how to do that over the years,” says Balachandran. He admits to being on a chocolate hiatus at the moment. There’s only so much of a chocolate overload a person can handle. But he’s more than willing to indulge his customers with a spread of the finest single-origin dark chocolate delicacies at his café.

Travelling for food

An avid traveller, Balachandran makes it a point to experiment with travels as much as he does with his products.

His latest of which was to Rinchen Cafeteria, on one of the world’s highest motorable road, Khardung La. This journey led to the making of his newest product, Rinchen’s Hot Chocolate.

Balachandran says, “I went there to understand what exactly they served,” and adds, “We interacted with a lot of people from the Indian Army. Now we have signed up for a project with the Indian Army where we supply this particular hot chocolate to them. It’s done at a no-profit, no-loss with the Army.” The Rinchen’s Hot Chocolate is sold as a powder which you can either mix with milk or with water, for vegans. It is now available at the Zuka stores.

The store in Puducherry is located at 319, Mission Street, MG Road Area. For details, call 2221191.