Noor Freiha and Alexandre Vandale, a successful duo. (Credit: Nada Stanková)
In the collective imagination, chocolate has never entirely escaped a sense of suspicion. If it inspires such fascination, it is also because it has long been associated with the idea of guilty pleasure — a sweet indulgence enjoyed in full awareness of its “sinfulness.”In Europe, the options have until now seemed limited: on the one hand, mass-market chocolates, familiar and nostalgic but heavily processed; on the other, high-end maisons, more refined and complex, yet whose very prestige never fully erased a lingering sense of “indulgence.”Between the two, a third path has barely existed — a “cleaner” chocolate, but often at the expense of flavor, and therefore, pleasure. It is precisely this status quo that Lebanese entrepreneur Noor Freiha, 31, has chosen to overturn in a stroke of genius. With Makers, her chocolate shop on Fulham Road...
In the collective imagination, chocolate has never entirely escaped a sense of suspicion. If it inspires such fascination, it is also because it has long been associated with the idea of guilty pleasure — a sweet indulgence enjoyed in full awareness of its “sinfulness.”In Europe, the options have until now seemed limited: on the one hand, mass-market chocolates, familiar and nostalgic but...
