Robert Shea's Page

Just some fun chocolates for a recent event, from left to right:

- Salted caramel and Calvados caviar on a caramalized white chocolate and bacon stock chantilly in a dark chocolate cup
- Seville orange, carrots, and habanero confit on sanv blanc and passionfruit coulis and finished with maldon salt and rosemary flower in a dark chocolate cup
- Carbonated champagne pate on a rose dark chocolate ganache finished with Yuzu zest and lavender in a dark chocolate cup
- Alpine strawberry coulis on a t… Continue

For those of you that have been following my dramas with the AoC (your numbers are stunning! I had no idea!)... it is time for me to wrap it all up.

After requesting once again that they forward me their alleged evaluations and once again receiving no reply... how long does it take to compile notes? I wrote them a rather less polite letter. This time I stated that I wished for my money to be returned as they had failed to fulfill their end of our agreement. I told them that I did not believe an… Continue

At this point I'm just going to advise everyone against using this organization of crooks.

After again asking them about the feedback, the only reason I approached them in the first place, I waited two months and nothing. Not a peep from them, how long does it take to organize some notes? In two months, I've been able to organize 10's of thousands of pages of documentation, what is their issue? (You know, I hear there is this thing called a automated data processor, Madison Ave calls it a "comp… Continue

Seeing as how I have STILL not heard back with meaningful review from the Academy of Chocolate (it seems like they would have needed to put this information together at the time of judging, not months later) I've been thinking a lot about flawed review systems. The thread on the ethicalness of chocolate reviews only exasperated my frustration with this topic.

I should be able to say that I think Amedei is an overrated product that has never won an award that wasn't bought and paid for prior to… Continue

Whole Foods Market, the Academy of Chocolate, and other superficially quality focused organizations have all picked an unlikely whipping boy to highlight poor quality and artificiality... vanillin.

What is vanillin? It is the chemical responsible for the dominate flavor note in vanilla and it's what makes many barrel-aged spirits, wines, and vinegars "smoother" with time. In fact, a fun trick is to turn rotgut scotch into fancy scotch by the addition of a drop or so of vanillin (a fact that doe… Continue