58 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {food coloring} words by JOHANNA HARLOW • photography by PAULETTE PHLIPOT CHOCOLATE behind the bars in those three bars—cacao beans, cacao butter and vanilla-infused sugar—each one is completely distinct from the next. What unites them is that velvety mouthfeel. “I wanted to create this texture that would give you this super silky feeling,” he says, chalking it up to the lengthy stone-grinding process. “Some people do two to three days—but I feel like there’s this extra magic that occurs on the fifth day.” He compares it to making a satisfying stew. “There’s still a sense of the flavors meeting and mingling” at the beginning, he explains. “The ingredients, they’re still finding themselves.” This choice of metaphors makes more sense given Michael’s culinary background. Not only was he a chef at Mendocino Café and Theo’s Restaurant in Soquel, but he co-owned the Windmill Café in Santa Cruz and served as a personal chef for professional “Let it melt a little bit,” urges Michael Sigmon, owner of Minée Chocolate, as I bite into a bar. Resisting the instinct to chew and swallow, I savor it. “See how that’s really smooth and it just finishes really clean?” the Menlo Park resident says of his original 75% bean-to-bar dark chocolate, a formula that took three years to perfect. “That’s because of the balance and how long I grind it … It doesn’t coat with hard tannin in the back of your throat like a normal dark chocolate would. You want that lush finish, but you want it to disappear.” Before me, Michael has dealt out a set of chocolate bars. The illustrations on their packaging and colored foils remind me of trading cards, only tastier. He proffers a piece of Magick, his darkest bar at 80%. “I roasted a little darker to get the richness out of it, which is why it’s nuttier,” he explains. On we forge to the 60% dark Crescendo. “You get more of the vanilla in that.” Despite using the same three organic ingredients
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