How the Asian Flavors of her Childhood Inspired Mindy Fong to Create Jade Chocolates

After 14 years creating award-winning artisan chocolates, Mindy Fong, owner of Jade Chocolates, finally achieved her dream two months ago when she opened an elegant teahouse cafe on a cozy corner of San Francisco Chinatown with ample space to host brunches and afternoon teas.

The Chinatown location offers a fitting spot for Fong, who specializes in chocolate bars, bon bons and other treats which all feature Asian teas, spices, and fruit. Bon bons include flavors like Miso Caramel, Mint Ginger, and Lychee Rose Green Tea. 

Fong began her chocolate journey with four bars. Her Genmai bar, inspired by Japanese culture, features roasted brown rice, green and jasmine teas in a milk chocolate bar. She describes her Dragon’s Breath bar as “the most sophisticated flavor profile of all our bars with a distinctively different start, middle and finish.” It includes toasted sesame, smoky lapsang souchong tea and a ground red chili kick at the end. 

Fong’s first career was architectural designer, and her artistic creativity is evident not only in her innovative chocolates and gorgeous packaging, but also in the new space she designed. We spoke to Fong to learn more about her background and business.

You weren’t totally happy working as an architectural designer, how did you decide to make the switch to becoming a chocolatier? 

I don’t necessarily consider myself to be a chocolatier, I consider myself an artist first. I make visual and flavor combinations. I translated the color wheel into the flavor wheel. For example, the color wheel has complimentary colors which are opposite each other and analogous colors that are close to each other. Our Dragon’s Breath bar, for example, uses analogous flavors, smoky and spicy. I got inspired by the color of the paper first, Chinese Red, thought of the name, and then the flavors. And because Asian Dragons do not breathe fire, it’s more smoky than spicy.

I was inspired by my entrepreneurial grandfather, Joe Fong, to make that leap because he had more obstacles than I did when he came to California at the age of 16 from Canton, China. He didn’t speak any English, had only $20 in his pocket, and knew no one in this country. He ended up owning several restaurants and liquor stores. He was a very positive, and happy-go-lucky person and his demeanor was always pleasant. Comparatively, it was easy for me to dive into a new world, even though I did not know how to make chocolate in the beginning. I took a few classes, but I was basically self-taught. 

Were you a chocoholic as a child? 

Actually, I wasn’t that into chocolate growing up. I studied business trends and saw that artisan chocolate was predicted to trend big. My original business was called Cocoa Bites but I didn’t really know how to focus on which ingredients to use. Then someone told me that “cocoa bites” was a generic name for Cocoa Pebbles cereal. I was making chocolates, but with non-Asian ingredients and it didn’t really speak to me. Then I changed the name to Jade and focused on the Asian ingredients I grew up with, teas, tropical fruits, spices. I try to have everything related to Asian Pacific Islanders (API), but if the ingredients are not, I will think of a name. For example, salted caramel is a classic American flavor, and obviously I needed to have that. I chose the pyramid shape and called it “Gold Mountain Salted caramel” because “Gold Mountain” was the name that Chinese people called San Francisco during the Gold Rush.

After a few years of selling wholesale and a small retail space, why did you choose to expand? 

My previous places were super tiny, with no seats, people would just buy chocolate and leave. Here we added pastries, an apothecary bar, where we make our own syrups and tea floats, such as our Lychee Butterfly Pea Tea. I collaborate with my chef on the pastries for our brunch and tea. For the afternoon tea, I’ll think of the theme and research the possibilities, then talk with my chef and we fine tune it together. 

I really wanted to move to a space where we could have the seating to do afternoon teas. There is a market for it in San Francisco and no one is doing it with Asian Pacific Island themes. We offer a prix fixe meal, with three seatings a day, Thursday - Sunday. We plan to do a different theme every two months.  Our first themed tea, that ran until the until the end of June, was inspired by the animated movie, Turning Red, which features many food scenes. 

The second themed tea is called No Mercy and is based on the movie Karate Kid. We will be serving various dishes that connect with the three main characters: Japanese items for Mr. Miyagi, and Italian/NJ style dishes for Daniel La Russo, the protagonist.  We’ll also have something for his rival, Johnny Lawrence, who was a junk food guy.

What are your favorite creations? 

My favorite bon bon is the sunflower with sunflower butter and toasted salted sunflower seeds. It’s not very API, but my second favorite is the Kalamansi Lime (a popular fruit in the Philippines, where my mother’s family is from). And one product I created just for myself is the Orient Expresso bar, a combination of Turkish coffee (with cardamom) and sweet Vietnamese coffee.

What can we expect from Jade Chocolates in the future?

I am working on a new line of bars; they are not all Asian themed but based on San Francisco’s food inventions. The first is indeed Asian, with Fortune cookies and tea, the second I created for my dad, Coffee Crunch Cake bar, (a popular treat sold in Japantown and Chinatown). The third is based on the pink popcorn brick that they sell at the San Francisco Zoo, but instead of popcorn, we’re using popped sorghum, which is much smaller. The fourth honors Sourdough bread by including croutons. I am the only one who makes all the chocolate, and I’m still working on the fifth. We hope to have these available by the end of summer.