Chocolate leads Sarah Hart in unexpected directions

By Olivia Johnson
The Portland Upside
March 2010

Photo by Rob Bednark

Sarah Hart’s appreciation for the art of chocolate led her to start Alma Chocolates, where she creates interesting chocolate-spice blends and designs custom molds.

Sarah Hart has always had a passion for food. She treasures memories of visiting her grandparents’ house as a little girl. They had grown up as rural farmers during the depression and were still very poor when Sarah and her family stayed with them.

“Making food was her way of expressing love,” Sarah says of her grandmother Alma. “When we would visit, she was up before everyone else in the morning, making everyone’s favorite pies.”

Sarah inherited what she calls Alma’s “spirit and generosity of expressing love through food.” But instead of pies, Sarah found her niche in chocolates.

Sarah owns Alma Chocolates in Northeast Portland. Not only is the name significant because of her grandmother, Sarah has also discovered that alma means “soul” in Spanish and “to nourish” in Latin.

“Food is the basic way of nurturing people,” according to Sarah.

But man cannot live on chocolate alone. Alma Chocolates also doubles as a café, serving espresso, tea, and homemade baked goods.

The tiny shop is cozy, decorated with handcrafted and antique displays featuring the work of a new local artist each month. Sarah proudly arranges a unique medley of caramels, sauces, toffees, barks, bars, bonbons, and of course chocolates, at the front counter, on worn wooden shelves, and wherever else they can fit. The unmistakable scent of melted chocolate blended with exotic spices wafts from the kitchen, which peeks from behind thick brown curtains.

To Sarah, making chocolate is an art.

“I always said that I wanted to be an artist, but it took me a while to find my form,” she smiles.
Sarah uses only high-quality ingredients for her creations, all made in the compact kitchen in the back of her store. Coming up with new recipes is her favorite part of the job.

“I read cook books in bed like they’re novels. I can picture how things will taste.”

One particular challenge that thrills Sarah is to find the best way to pair uncommon spices with chocolate.

“It’s like pairing food and wine…finding what is complimentary and what is contrasting.”
She recalls reading about how a fellow chocolatier couldn’t figure out how to use cumin with a chocolate recipe.

“So, I said, ‘I want to figure that out!’”

At other times, Sarah’s friends can play her muse.

“One of my friends really likes ginger so I invented a toffee with ginger in it.”

But Sarah’s most exclusive items are the gilded icon chocolates she began creating five years ago in her own kitchen. Made of solid dark chocolate, she sets the icons in custom-designed molds before gilding them with 23-karat edible gold leaf. There are jolly-looking buddhas, serene Virgin Marys, and half-human, half-elephant Ganesha gods from Hindu mythology.

Since chocolate is such an amazing ingredient, she believes that its presentation should match its importance.

“So much of what you could get was cheesy…just googly-eyed rabbits,” Sarah explains, clearly tired of the monotonous way companies choose to market their chocolate.

Despite her love of food, Sarah never imagined becoming a chocolatier. The youngest of five children, she grew up in Springfield, Missouri. She attended Beloit College in Wisconsin for two years before moving to Eugene in 1986, where she received both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English from the University of Oregon. She landed a teaching job at Eastern Michigan University and moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan, but returned to Portland in 1994.

She got a job at Papa Haydn restaurant and loved it.

“I come from a very academic family—everyone had gone to college—and working in the food industry was not viewed as a ‘real’ job,” Sarah explains.

Nevertheless, she went on to work at L’Auberge Restaurant. But the idea to open a chocolate shop wouldn’t leave Sarah alone.

“I listened to this voice inside asserting itself. It was like a string that was dangling in front of me, and I started pulling, and it kept going, doors kept opening.”

Instead of enrolling in a culinary school she opted to have a seasoned chocolatier, Ian Titteron, teach her everything he knew abut chocolate in the comfort of her own home. After many tests and experiments, Sarah began selling her chocolates at the Portland Farmer’s Market.

She opened Alma Chocolates in 2006. Since then, Sarah has taken her business online and opened two mini locations at the Cork Wine Shops in Northeast and Northwest Portland. She also continues to sell her treats at the Portland Farmer’s Market.

Although juggling her personal life and her business has been one of the biggest challenges, Sarah finds the time and resources to constantly stretch her skills as a chocolatier. This past year she traveled to France and took a bonbon-making class.

Sarah acknowledges the passion that drives her work ethic.

“I have always just loved that food is both creative and nurturing. It brings people together and creates community…it can be done with great love. I feel like we have a good reputation, and I want to keep pushing for that.”

Indeed, it’s a reputation worthy of Grandma Alma’s gilded legacy.

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Visit Alma Chocolate online at almachocolate.com or in person at 140 NE 28th Ave., Portland, Oregon, 503-517-0262.

Olivia lives in SE Portland and is working on her BA in Journalism and Theology at Multnomah University. She loves reading restaurant reviews, traveling, Frank Sinatra and Stumptown coffee.