Chocolate Shops We Love: Twenty-Four Blackbirds

The Science of Great Chocolate

If it weren’t for the fact that the medium in question is chocolate, (no less addictive in my opinion than certain regulated substances,) Twenty-Four Blackbirds’ Mike Orlando’s story reads like something from a popular crime series: “I was previously a scientist,” he says. “I was a marine biologist and a chemist, and when I got kind of bored of that, I taught myself to make chocolate.” When I told him “You are the Walter White of chocolate,” he replied, “You’re not the first one to say that.” Someone get this man a pork pie hat! And a deal to produce a series called “Breaking Bean.”

While many who begin to dabble in chocolate take the confectionary approach, Orlando’s science background, coupled with an established interest in home coffee roasting, (a modified toaster oven is involved,) took him directly to the bean-to-bar route. “I was really fascinated by the whole process, but mainly the fermentation of cocoa,” he says. “By learning that I started looking into the flavor chemistry of chocolate and how it all relates back, more or less, to the fermentation, and secondarily, to the genetics. That drove my curiosity, and in every single origin I tried, I was fascinated by the flavor differences, and what caused them.”

Before opening the brick-and-mortar version of Twenty-Four Blackbirds, Orlando operated out of commissary kitchens, producing an initial single origin bar from Ghanian forastero cacao, rather than go the popular criollo route, long considered to be the “best” chocolate source. “The point with me doing that was to kind of show that you can make a single origin bar out of any genetics,” he says. “The flavor is the flavor. You can get good produce and bad produce. So I did that as a kind of statement to say that this African bean can taste amazing. That was our first bar. That's what got us off the ground.”

The Store

After about 6 years of producing chocolates nomadically, and a 2-year search for the perfect space that could function as a storefront, production facility, laboratory, and tropical nursery all in one, it was a serendipitous Craigslist ad that finally steered Orlando toward his current Santa Barbara location. “It was a posting with no pictures, and no information, but turned out to be this really amazing, family-owned building, and they really liked me and supported my business,” says Orlando.

Doing his own buildout to keep costs down, the resulting space is spare but gorgeous, with dark wood and deep teal walls, where chocolate isn’t only for sale, but very much on display, and where guests can both shop and take a tour of the production facilities.

Best Selling Chocolates

With both chocolate bars and confections like truffles and bon bons, Orlando remains a champion of single-origin, dark chocolate, and especially that of African origin, and his best sellers reflect that passion.

75% Tanzania Kokoa Kamili Bar

“African beans tend to have a really nice fruitiness to them, and nice tartness, but still a very rounded cocoa note,” says Orlando, and this Tanzanian bar sourced from Kokoa Kamili expresses itself with notes of bright red fruit, red velvet cake, and blackberry tart.

75% Madagascar Bejofo Estate Bar

Another fruit-forward African selection, the organic cacao beans come from Bertil Åkesson's Bejofo Estate in the Ambanja region of Madagascar. Orlando likens its flavor to raspberries and citrus, with an underlying toffee note.

Vanilla Salted Caramels

All of Twenty-Four Blackbirds’ truffles and bon bons are enrobed with the same single-origin chocolates that go into the bars, which results in balanced, never overly sweet bites, leaving the dark chocolate as the predominant or lingering taste. Additionally, they are hand-painted, with glossy, splashy exteriors. “The rich vanilla caramel sprinkled with Maldon sea salt crystals are encapsulated in our 100% unsweetened Dominican chocolate,” says Orlando. “This makes for a somewhat deconstructed eating experience; you taste the caramel, salt and chocolate separately.”

Also Look For

In addition to regular tours of the facility, Orlando conducts weekly wine and chocolate tastings as a partnership with a local wine company, and there’s also the possibility of truffle making classes at the store returning to the calendar after a Covid hiatus.

Also on deck, in addition to his cacao nursery, Orlando is in the process of establishing a vanilla bean farm on the premises. “It will be the first of its kind in the United States outside of Hawaii and maybe Florida,” he says. “I just got 150 vanilla vines from Veracruz, Mexico. So they're acclimating in my factory now.”