Skill and care
Charles Lemai was 14 years old when he began his apprenticeship as a pâtissier in Lille, Northern France near the Belgian border.
A large part of a pâtissier’s role is understanding chocolate – learning its properties, qualities, its character and then developing the skill and care to work with it, to transform it into forms and textures.
Charles would learn the basics – the importance of humidity and temperature to protect its flavour and prevent bloom.
Understanding that cacao beans had their own terroir – beans from Madagascar were fruity, Venezuelan beans were nutty.
He would discover how to play with flavours pairing chocolate with different fruits, nuts, spices, herbs, and liqueurs.
He learnt to layer chocolate into the delicate meringue of his merveilleux.
In his ganaches and glazes he found balance between fat, moisture and flavour.
Truffles and mousses taught him emulsification & texture and how to avoid splitting.
He mastered temperature control to get the glossy finish, the snap and the perfect crystallisation to produce a thin yet strong praline shell.
For twenty years Charles practiced his craft and developed the control and accuracy to produce daily mouthwatering miracles customers stared at through the pâtisserie window.
Then on a trip to Vietnam 2016 everything changed – Charles met chocolatiers Samuel Maruta and Vincent Marou at Marou Faiseurs de Chocolat in Ho Chi Minh City and learnt about the emerging bean-to-bar chocolate movement.
Creating chocolate from scratch, using only cacao sourced locally and having precise control over flavour and texture through every step of the process spoke to the pâtissier in him.
But adding to that, and perhaps more important, was Vincent and Sam’s relationships and connection with their growers and the fair prices they paid them for their cacao.
Revelation drives change and brings people into our lives.
Yu Chi came into the artisan chocolate world from a different path. Before he met Charles, he was traveling to remote cacao-growing regions, building relationships with farmers to source high-quality cacao.
That he and Charles would meet and team up seemed like an entirely natural progression.
The following year Charles and Chi opened their bean-to-bar chocolate company, Atypic, in a stall at the South Melbourne Market.
Operating inside a tiny 42 square metre temperature controlled glass box, where everything, the roasting, the winnowing, the conching, the molding, would be done in full public view Atypic, would literally be about transparency.
From the growers they sourced their cacao, to the transformation to chocolate their customers would see through their glass windows, to their packaging that would honour the origin of the cacao, everything would be seen.
The name Atypic reflects Charles and Chi’s desire to do something singular, something different in the chocolate world.
You can taste their vision at Fair Food in these beautifully made and packaged bars:
1. Atypic Dark Chocolate Caramel Brittle (72% Dark)
A rich and bittersweet dark chocolate infused with golden shards of house-made caramel brittle, offering a sophisticated crunch and balanced sweetness against robust cocoa.
2. Atypic Dark Chocolate Mixed Berries (74% Dark, Vegan)
This vegan bar combines intense dark chocolate with a colourful mix of dried cranberries, blueberries, incaberries, and goji, delivering a tart-sweet fruit burst in every bite.
3. Atypic Dark Single Origin Solomon Islands (70% Dark)
A pure dark bar made exclusively from Solomon Islands cacao, featuring mellow, nutty, and floral undertones with a smooth, silky texture and no added flavorings.
4. Atypic Milk Chocolate Biscuit Crumbs (50% Milk)
Award-winning milk chocolate blending creamy, caramelized notes with finely ground buttery biscuit crumbs, creating a nostalgic yet refined cookie-crunch experience.
Have a great week
Chris
