A First-Hand Chocolate Experience

By Smoor

Text & Photographs: Lyle Michael

Die-hard chocolate lovers, and fans of the Peanut Butter Choco Cups by this premium chocolate brand by Founder & CEO, Vimal Sharma, we knew we just had to make the day trip to Bangalore for this. The launch of the Smoor Experience Centre located in Avalahalli – about over an hour’s distance from the airport. The schlep was worth it!

You enter and a large Smoor-engraved chocolate bar greets you, along with a display of gift hampers and a mural of chocolate lovers ‘United by Flavours’ of Smoor. Very well-organised and thorough, the tour of the factory, where the magic takes place, begins. It was like stepping into a scene from Willy Wonka, minus the chocolate pool. Safety precautions and hygiene controls in place, each section, room and machine was explained and the chocolate-making experienced first-hand. Not just chocolates – of dark, white and milk compounds – but all types of confectionery like cakes and pastries, too. Just watching the men and women judiciously and intensively create and mould the products that we bite into and consume in seconds is an experience to cherish.

From the mini cakes swirled in a flourish with butter cream to the dragees that are coated with cocoa dust, the eclairs that are neatly topped with lemon cream, the caramel praline bits that sit so temptingly before they adorn the variety of snaps like the almond, the cute little hazelnut-coated truffles ready for dispatch, and the fabulously-decorated large cocoa beans that go on the cover of the signature cocoa bars – of premium couverture chocolate…all so fascinating.

A question that arises: what is the difference between couverture and compound chocolate? Couverture is more expensive as it’s high quality chocolate containing a larger percentage of cocoa butter as opposed to compound chocolate which contains butter from vegetable fats. You have separate sections to cater to the production of both. Just as you have separate zones for chocolates and confectionery and the savoury section that doles out gourmet snacks and foods, too.

As you walk through the 68,000 sq. ft. space that is the ‘living museum of chocolate’ inclusive of the factory and event space, you notice a mini unwinding area with amphitheatre-like seating and comfy cushions, and more, for employees to kick their feet up. All that chocolate can get you dizzy! But we carry on, taking a look through the huge ovens that mass bake the cakes we see on display, the unending vats with cocoa being swirled round and round at different speeds to free it from any lumps, the dusting of truffles with cocoa powder ever so gently in its respective vat – from which we steal a taste or two – and the dispatch area where large crates with the finished goods await pick-up.

Once done with the tour – which will soon be open to the public at a price, upon booking and availability – we head upstairs for some chocolate-making and food and drink, with live singing of some our favourite English hits. The dark hot chocolate by Smoor and the strawberry-filled cocoa bites rounded off the experience smoothly. Smoor’s Experience Centre, we’ll be back, soon! 

Smoor Experience Centre
Survey No.56/6, Avalahalli, Hobli, Bengaluru East, Bidarahalli, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560049
Price: Rs 1500 per person
Days: Wednesday, Saturday & Sunday
Timings: 11:00 AM – 1:30 PM | 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Registration: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdYhEtuHn4ylPS1bqHaRi1MCnnmvhyyyntiGXcnKXtnEPSsLg/viewform