Developing the Orient Espresso Bar

Orient Espresso Bar

Showing some Hospitality

Here’s the second of my posts that describes how chocolate and culture come together. The Orient Espresso bar is scented with my favorite spice-cardamom. It’s mouthfeel is extremely smooth and creamy with strong caramel notes but still high in cacao.

Country of Inspiration: Vietnam and Turkey

Turkish and Vietnamese coffee are the inspirations for this bar. Vietnamese coffee is extremely sweet with heaps of condensed milk added to the beverage. Turkish coffee is generally very dark with little or no sugar and usually an aromatic spice like cardamom is added while the coffee is being ground. The Orient Espresso bar is a 50% cacao chocolate with milk chocolate blended into this bittersweet bar. A perfect blend of these two coffees.

The Label: The name of this bar is a play on words of the famed train, The Orient

Express. The front of the label depicts a man in a blue uniform holding a cup of steaming coffee, a symbol of hospitality in Turkey and other cultures. Behind him is The Orient Express. The blue uniform is an actual uniform of one of the Orient Express lines and the cup and saucer depicts the train’s logo.

If you look at the front label where the Jade Chocolate’s logo is, you can see the pattern of the background begin here and wrap around the backside of the label. This is a pattern for a Turkish rug. The image below shows the illustration of the rug.