All That Glitters

With chocolate prices rising, pastry chefs consider their options.

Chocolate prices have soared nearly 400 percent between 2023 and March 2025 due to climate-induced drought, erratic rainfall and crop diseases in cacao-producing regions like Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, which supply 60 percent of the world’s cocoa. This spike has pastry chefs reconsidering how they source and use chocolate.

While the recently de rigueur molten chocolate cake has been all but driven from your local pub and bistro menu, leading pastry chefs remain surprisingly unfazed, having always employed chocolate sparingly. “Even though I love to eat chocolate every day, my desserts have always been more fruit-forward,” says Patrice Demers, chef and co-owner of Montreal’s Sabayon.

We’re lucky to run an upscale tasting-menu restaurant rather than a pastry shop. Customers are more willing to pay higher prices for a dessert in a restaurant than for something they’d bring home. Patrice Demers

Three years ago, when he still ran Patrice Pâtissier, he would spend more than $1,500 on chocolate each week. “I’d rather not imagine the cost today.” Instead, he uses the best-quality chocolate more sparingly to preserve margins.

Vancouver pastry chef Kenta Takahashi, recognized multiple times by Canada’s 100 Best for his work at Boulevard Restaurant, shares Demers’ perspective. “I’ve always used chocolate to build complexity rather than relying on volume, so our menu hasn’t changed dramatically,” Takahashi says. “what’s changed, though, is consumer awareness. Guests increasingly ask questions about sourcing – and why [chocolate has] become so valuable – which invites conversation about quality and scarcity. I think that’s a good thing.

-Michelle Sproule