Marina Stroh-Ibri Uses Chocolate to Craft a Taste of Brazil in France

Editor’s note: Should contributor Estelle Tracy’s story about a Brazilian confectioner and chocolate maker in France make you want a taste, you’re in luck. Discover La Brigaderie de Paris as part of an online tasting she will be hosting on Sunday, October 23, 2022. Tickets are available (for US participants only).

It’s a warm June day in Montfort l’Amaury, a chic village in the Western suburbs of Paris, and I’m walking up a street lined with stone houses, looking for chocolate. Eventually, I notice a blackboard with the words “chocolat pur cacao” and an invitation to enter: “entrez!”

I smile and oblige, pushing open the glass door of La Brigaderie de Paris, where founder Marina Stroh-Ibri greets me.

“Bonjour!”, she says, before leading me to a backroom where she hosts cacao-themed workshops.

There’s a shelf covered with chocolate-themed books, both in French and English and, as we sit at the table, the chef is bursting with excitement.

“A chocolate award’s ceremony is tonight. I got an email urging me to watch it, I think I’ve won something,” she says.

From Brazil to France

I’m not really surprised. Ever since I’ve tried Marina’s savory inclusion bars in 2021, I’ve dreamed of one thing: getting more of her chocolate.

Originally from Brazil, Marina was raised in the professional culinary world. “My grandfather owned restaurants in Brazil and, when I was 4-5 years old, I’d go to the kitchens and never wanted to get out. It was like being at Disneyland,” she recalls. After graduating in international relations, she returned to her first love and got a degree in the culinary arts in Brazil. In 2007, she moved to France to work as an international coordinator for the United Nations. However, her passion for cooking kept calling and it wasn’t long before Marina answered, first by teaching Brazilian cooking classes, then opening her very own shop. In 2012, La Brigaderie de Paris first opened its doors as a brigadeiro shop.

The signature candy of Brazil, a brigadeiro is a truffle-like confections made with sweetened condensed milk instead of cream. Though usually quite sweet, Marina chose to decrease the sugar content of her recipe to appeal to French palates. Today, she offers several varieties in her shop, with flavors ranging from classic coffee and raspberry to more contemporary ones like matcha. My favorite? Coconut white chocolate.

At the beginning, the Brazil-born chef made her confections with couverture chocolate. By 2018, however, she started developing a line of bean-to-bar chocolate using exclusively Brazilian cacao. While self-taught makers are legion in the world of craft chocolate, the craftswoman sought mentors to learn and perfect her chocolate-making techniques “I trained with Arcelia Gallardo (of Mission Chocolate in Brazil),” she explains. Now La Brigaderie de Paris proudly offers both bean-to-bar and bean to brigadeiros ®.

In her small workshop, which you can peek at from behind a glass window in the store, Marina and her staff turn Brazilian cacao beans sourced in Amazonia, Bahia, and Espirito Santo into intensely flavored dark chocolate. La Brigaderie’s signature chocolate is made with cacao from Fazenda Camboa in Bahia, the largest producer of organic cacao in Brazil “Marina’s Fazenda Camboa is the best I've tasted so far,” says chocolate educator and judge Shobitha Ramadasan. “She has managed to let the origin's unique attributes shine through with minimal bitterness.”

Bold Inclusion Bars

The Fazenda Camboa is used as a base for 2 bold inclusion bars: the Feijoada and Moqueca, both of which are inspired by eponymous Brazilian dishes. With Feijoada, you’ll appreciate the contrast of smooth and creamy chocolate with crunchy back beans and puffed rice. In the Moqueca, the savory blend of tomato, peppers, and coconut plays especially well against the chocolate.

Since its inception, the company’s focus on Brazilian terroir and flavors has stood out in a country rich with chocolate history, resulting in multiple accolades. Last year, the French edition of Marie Claire magazine included the company’s brigadeiros and Feijoada bar in its top 10 ethically made chocolate products.

On that bright summer day, I leave the shop with bottles of cacao juice, a box of colorful brigadeiros, and dozens of chocolate bars. Some are wrapped in colorful packaging, while others tucked in matte brown boxes, which are made of recycled cacao husks usually discarded during the chocolate-making process. When I wake up the next day, I learn on Instagram that her intuition was correct, and La Brigaderie has received 4 awards. The Fazenda Camboa got a Bronze award, while the single origin Amazonia Tuerê and Guarani, as well as the Feijoada each received a Silver. For the dedicated maker, however, the awards are more than a recognition of her company’s hard work. “The goal of bean-to-bar chocolate isn’t just to deliver an exceptional gustatory experience, it’s also to value the work of all the people who make it all happen, namely, the cacao producers,” Marina says.

Visit La Brigaderie de Paris at 14 Rue de Sancé, 78490 Montfort l'Amaury, in France, or order online at: https://www.labrigaderiedeparis.com/.