New River Oaks Chocolate Shop Brings a Traffic-Stopping Fountain — and Bold Wonders: Eye Candy Takes on Whole New Meaning at Cacao & Cardamom

Cacao & Cardamom’s second location isn’t quite open yet, but the gold-plated dual-flavored chocolate fountain in the window tells another story. Forty pounds of chocolate — half dark, half caramelized white — currently drips and swirls through the 5-foot-tall fountain.

Even accustomed confectioners can’t get enough of the scent.

“It’s an incredible aroma,” Cacao & Cardamom founder and owner Annie Rupani laughs. “Hopefully we’ll be able to start using it for fondue purposes, too.” Rupani is gloved up, arranging line after line of bonbons in the lit display case.

The storefront at 2013 West Gray in the River Oaks Shopping Center opens this month. It’s the sweet shootoff of the original Galleria location in the Centre at Post Oak — and it’s taking over the space of Araya Artisan Chocolate, an unrelated gourmet chocolate shop.

But Rupani will tell you that sweet isn’t the only taste she’s going for with the new look.

“We’ve got to have a lot of balance and intrigue. I think that’s really what I want to relay in the chocolate,” she says.

The fountain may be what grabs your attention first, but an appreciation of aesthetics runs rampant throughout the bite-sized shop. Each and every one of the chocolatier’s bonbons are hand-painted in bold hues.

“When you gift someone a box of these chocolates, their eyes first eat the chocolate,” Rupani says. “My mom recently just said this — I’m so shocked that she did — she said ‘I regret not pursuing Annie’s artistic ambitions.’

“I was so good at academics that my parents both pushed that. I guess after I graduated all this art that was built up in me came out in chocolate.”

Today, that manifests itself in more than 40 types of bright bonbons in infused flavors you’d never think to combine sitting in a jewel box of a storefront. Garam Masala pistachio. Black sesame ginger. Lychee basil.

The Law of Chocolate

Years ago, Rupani was a law school hopeful with a passion for food and a recent order of 50 pounds of Hawaiian cacao she’d purchased on a whim. While studying for the LSAT, Rupani became a chocolate addict.

She lived in her parents’ native Pakistan for six months while studying, then she took a trip to Hawaii, where she attended a chocolate conference.

At first, Rupani thought it would be simple. She’d develop a relationship with Hawaiian cacao farmers, and they’d send her shipments and she’d be a full-fledged chocolatier. While being a full-time student.

She got as far as taking the test and turning in her application. “I realized early on that chocolate is an arduous process, especially the bean-to-bar process. It takes a ton of equipment and time,” Rupani notes.

Rupani launched her business — before she ever knew it would grow into one —with that 50 pounds of cacao and a boatload of books. It was then she started experimenting. And it was then she started to see the vast potential of chocolate.

“Chocolate itself just has so many facets,” she tells PaperCity. “I just started playing with it. Ordering molds, pouring chocolate inside of the mold. Seeing how I could temper it, which just came naturally.”

After her initial foray into Hawaiian cacao, she expanded the sources. Now, she uses French chocolate made with beans from all over — Peru, Madagascar, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Mexico, Ecuador, the Caribbean and beyond.

It wouldn’t be enough to just infuse the same base chocolates with the different flavors she had in her mind.

“We use a lot of different types of chocolate. I think that’s one of the ways we’ve grown as a company, really exploring the single-origin chocolates,” Rupani says.

Infusion flavors came naturally. When Rupani was just starting to experiment, she’d come back from Pakistan, she’d gone to China, she’d visited Malaysia.

“I took a chocolate course in Malaysia for my birthday,” she says. “I came back with all these flavors in my head.”

Cardamom was the first to click, a spice from her heritage symbolized in Indian sweets from her childhood.

“I’d been around it my whole life,” she says. “I put cardamom in white chocolate with a little bit of rose water. My mom tried it, and she was like ‘This tastes like mithai.’ ”

The comparison to the favorite Indian treat sold Rupani. “I thought, ‘This kind of works. Why can’t I do guava tamarind like Hawaiian?’ And Szechuan peppercorn since I’d gone to China,” Rupani says. “I’d been surrounded by these spices, so infusing them in a cream to make a ganache seemed very natural to me.”

Rupani credits those flavor innovations with her ability to open up a “whole new world of chocolate.” It’s the same experience you’ve had all your life, but taking it to the next level in terms of flavor profile.

True Houston Chocolate Flavors

The chocolatier put her creativity to the test with her newest series, the Houston Collection.

“We used all local ingredients and collaborated with local businesses as an ode to Houston for their love and support,” Rupani says. The seven bonbons are devoted to Houston’s diversity.

There’s Black Currant & Maranon, a black currant caramel paired with Maranon ganache made from Houston’s own Xocolla single-origin chocolate. The Cold Brew Coffee Crunch gets its kick from Java Pura Coffee Roasters cold brew and coffee beans. The Double Goat with house-made Cajeta and dark chocolate ganache was made possible by the Houston Dairymaids.

Fig & Malbec is infused with local Nice Winery’s 2012 Reserve. HIVE Honey & Thyme’s local honey reduction comes from HIVE Bee Farm. Old Fashioned Bon-bon with Angostura bitters packs a punch from Yellow Rose Distillery, and Olive & Oregano features Kalamata oregano crunchy breadcrumbs created by Breadman Baking Company.

These combos may be daring, but Rupani says people can’t get enough of them.

“People act crazy around chocolate. I think it’s just the satiating factor to chocolate. It’s just so decadent, especially when you add a savory element,” she says. “Like when we have Masala pistachio and add warm spices to the dark chocolate layers, it kind of makes it even more sumptuous.”

Cacao & Cardamom sells chocolate for everything from graduations to Mother’s Day to birthdays to anniversaries. “There really is chocolate for any occasion,” Rupani says. You can order it online or in stores.

But she won’t just let them eat cake.

“People come in here and always ask, do you have cake? Do you have this? Do you have that? No. The world of chocolate is so vast that we still haven’t covered all of it. There’s still so much to do within chocolate itself before we move into baked goods,” Rupani says.

“If you want plain milk chocolate or plain dark chocolate, you can get them from anywhere else.”

You’ll have to go to Cacao & Cardamom for Mango caramel, Cardamom Rose and Strawberry Szechuan. It’s a whole new world of chocolate. It’s up to you to decide if it’s out of this world.