Nadine Kam photos
A fan of Dylan's Candy Bar poses for a photo with Dylan Lauren and Chocolate the bunny.

On Easter mornings, while all the other kids were anxious to bite into their chocolate bunnies on Easter morning, Dylan Lauren resisted.

"I would only eat the chocolate eggs," the founder of Dylan's Candy Bar said. "I didn't want to eat the chocolate bunnies because I felt bad for them. I just liked to collect them and look at them."

To this day the grown-up Lauren refuses to bite into those vulnerable chocolate ears and legs. She was in town March 23, sharing her latest treats, with "Chocolate" the bunny at her side, handing out samples in Neiman Marcus' third-floor Epicure department, where Dylan's Candy Bar is a store within a store, full of colorful sweets bringing smiles to all who encounter it.

In a phone  interview last week, she told me, "Easter has always my favorite holiday because I love rabbits and bright colors."

Her eye for candy as design elements led her to go beyond the kid craft of coloring Easter eggs to decorating the family table with candies, "creating place settings and centerpieces with candies that look like edible flowers."

The daughter of designer Ralph Lauren said her father indulged her quirks and encouraged her passion. "He saw it was very unique and saw fashion in the candy colors; he understood it," she said.

Despite the obvious color and gustatory benefits, candy might not be top of mind for many people as a decorative element. But Lauren said it can be a fast and enchanting addition to floral and table settings, first working its magic as an icebreaker. The sight of brightly colored sweets tends to lighten spirits and put people at ease.

"With candy there's no wrong way to do things. It always looks pretty and tastes good," Lauren said. "When people do see candy arrangements, it always seems fresh and different."

Think about that for your next holiday table.

Dylan's Candy Bar's giant lollipops.

Dylan Lauren was signing copies of her book, "Dylan's Candy Bar: Unwrap Your Sweet Life.," which is her guide to entertaining with candy.

One of the new items available, rubbah slippah tins full of candy, $18 in Neiman Marcus Epicure.

Fans from Japan: the language of candy is universal.

Nadine Kam photos
The first course from Ryan Manaut's Chaîne des Rôtisseurs' Jeune Commis International Competition menu at Oahu Country Club: ahi tartar with tempura asparagus tips, prawn ceviche, lime gelee and wasabi foam. Guests were to mix the accompanying ogo, green onion, white onion and kukui nut in with the fish. This was paired with Brancott Estate Sauvignon Blanc, 2011.

Ryan Manaut, a young chef that joined the staff of executive chef Alfred Cabacungan at Oahu Country Club, was a winner in the prestigious Chaîne des Rôtisseurs' Jeune Commis International Competition, and tomorrow is the last day members can sample the menu he presented in Berlin—with a few tweaks, considering chefs are constantly trying to improve their work— along with fantastic wine pairings by sommelier Randy Ching.

After winning the Hawaii competition, followed by the national competition in May, he traveled to Berlin last month, and in his first international competition, placed 4th among entrants from 22 countries. This marked the first time that any young chef from Hawaii has competed in the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs' Jeune Commis International Competition.

Like the cooking shows "Iron Chef" and "Chopped," chefs in the competition were presented with mystery baskets full of ingredients from which they were to create their meals. After winning the Hawaii competition, Manaut was coached by Kapiolani Community College Culinary Arts associate professor Alan Tsuchiyama, who also sent him several lists of ingredients weekly to prepare Manaut for anything that might come up.

At the competition, chefs—working alone in the kitchen—had a half hour to come up with their menus, and three hours to cook. Manaut said Tsuchiyama had tried to stump him with ingredients like sauerkraut, Jerusalem artichoke and pike, but in practice, he said he was able to come up with a menu in less than half an hour each time.

In competition, the ingredients may have stumped other chefs, but most turned out to be daily fare for any local chef. All chefs were given the same ingredients, and they had to incorporate all in a three-course meal: two racks of Irish lamb, 12 shrimp, 600 grams of ahi, raspberries, blueberries, kalamansi, baby spinach, Thai asparagus, mini carrots, mini zucchini, snow peas, Kenya beans, 12 eggs, 11 Tablespoons of cream, and chocolate. Typical pantry ingredients were also made available to them.

Before entering the competition kitchen, all chefs' belongings were checked to ensure no one sneaked in any secret ingredients.

Ryan Manaut in the Oahu Country Club kitchen with his dessert of chocolate-raspberry layered cake with blueberry semifreddo, candied kalamansi and Chambord whipped cream.

The challenges, he said, were that "all the stove top burners were electric, not the standard gas burners we use. That made temperature controls very hard when trying to make my dessert. I ended up overcooking the semifreddo once, wasting valuable time doing it again.

"I also wasn't used to their little combi-ovens. These are great little ovens that can both bake and steam your product. However, all the directions for the oven were in German so I had to just press buttons and hope for the best. That tactic resulted in burning my cake, so once again, I had to waste time remaking it. Even retrieving spices from the pantry was a chore since they were all labeled in German. I had to open each container to see what was inside."

But, it all turned out well, and considering that prepping and completing the competition has filled three-quarters of his year, he said he's taking a break from thinking about any more contests for now.

In the meantime, I was fortunate to be able to sample the menu as a guest of Chaîne Honolulu chapter Vice Charge de Missions Dr. Thomas Sakoda and his wife Ryuko.

The OCC dinner began with pork gyoza with kabayaki glaze.

Following the appetizer at top of page, we were presented with the entree of roasted balsamic crusted rack of lamb roulade with lamb jus, roasted peppers and basil, and mashed potatoes, baby courgette (zucchini) and carrot. This was paired with Gigondas, Les Pallieres "Les Racines," 2008.

Ryan plates the semifreddo. The experience of the chocolate-raspberry layered cake and blueberry semifreddo were enhanced by Randy Ching's pairing of Banyuls, Domaine La Tour Vieille, 2010.

Ryan's grandmother Alison Manaut said she was always happy to be one of the guinea pigs for his cooking experiments when he was growing up.

Dinner ended with OCC's Belgian chocolates.

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The dinner marked my second visit to OCC in a week. Earlier, I'd been invited to lunch by a member, and we tried one of the newer items on the menu, a lobster-avocado sandwich.

Amuse bouche of fried prosciutto with avocado puree.

Pasta with mushrooms and basil.

The lobster sandwich.

Nadine Kam photos
Manoa Chocolate Hawaii founder Dylan Butterbaugh, with Megan Gallagher, left, and Tia Apilando.

Manoa Chocolate Hawaii hosted the grand opening of its Kailua factory on June 16, from afternoon through evening, with no shortage of chocolate aficionados clamoring for a taste of its 60 to 72 percent premium chocolate bars.

Founder Dylan Butterbaugh became fascinated with the process of making chocolate in small batches with friends about two years ago, and after much trial and error and invention, created his boutique chocolate with aims of raising Hawaii's profile as a producer of upscale chocolate.

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The operation is as green as can be, with people power going into the winnowing process that separates the husks from nibs of the roasted cacao beans. Now that it's summer, Dylan is something of a Tom Sawyer or Pied Piper for friends of his younger brother Carson, who are gladly putting their muscles to work grinding the nibs and pedaling the Dora the Explorer tricycle that powers the winnower. (A vibrating back massager keeps the beans moving.) Their reward is a taste of the remnants of the chocolate tempering process.

I got a chance to try my hand at grinding, and it was interesting to note the vast difference in flavor of the nibs and the first pass at the freshly ground chocolate, which was sour, fruity and bitter. The grinding releases the cocoa liquor, a complex combination of more than 300 chemical compounds that give a particular region's chocolate its particular flavor profile. This is the essence of the cacao and Manoa Chocolate celebrates the differences by importing beans from all over the world, producing single-origin chocolate bars for our side-by-side comparisons.

In store that day were chocolate bars made with cacao beans from Samoa, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Peru. Hawaii regions currently being represented are Waiahole and Hamakua, and Dylan has high hopes that with his operation, more growers will be inspired to plant cacao trees and contribute to a viable industry in the islands. He has access to an acre on the dry side of Waimanalo that he intends to plant with cacao.

Nothing could be sexier than the combination of Hawaii and chocolate, he said, and I agree!
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Manoa Chocolate Hawaii is on the second floor at 315 Uluniu St., in Kailua, above Cinnamon's restaurant. Call 343-3040.

On display: A cacao pod and cacao beans in various stages of production.

The chocolate is conched and tempered before it can be molded into chocolate bars.

Lisa-Marie Tam was among the first customers of the day. Her chocolate necklace pegged her as an aficionado.

A chalkboard showed the origins of chocolate available that day.

Oialla photo

Chocolate connoisseurs were treated to the decadent experience of sampling premium Oilla and Bonnatt chocolates paired with 12 wines at Neiman Marcus's Mariposa restaurant on April 24.

There's no shortage of food in my life, so I try not to eat too much prior to various food events, but it was a good thing that my friend Candice had the common sense to suggest eating a light dinner before the tasting. If we hadn't done that, we probably would have been in no position to drive home by the end of the evening.

The guest of honor for the evening was award-winning Danish chef and chocolatier, Rasmus Bo Bojeson, who was in town to promote his organic line of chocolate, Oialla, masterfully paired with wine selected by Hawaii’s newest master sommelier Patrick Okubo. Okubo worked at Mariposa before earning his master sommelier title and joining Young's Market (formerly Better Brands).

To start, Bojeson had us crack open a roasted cacao bean to taste his organic Criollo cacao, harvested from wild Amazonian cacao trees, to better appreciate the essence of the unadulterated chocolate. The hull was fairly tough, so we had to bite into it to get at the delicious chocolate nibs inside, which Bojeson said he sprinkles freely on food day through night, on everything from salads to salmon, a combination he especially loves.

Nadine Kam photos
Neiman Marcus's chocolate tasting event at Mariposa started with cracking open a roasted cacao bean and tasting the unadulterated chocolate nibs inside, that go into Oialla's 70 percent Criollo chocolate. It's available in their Epicure department.

The pairings were inspired. The first round had the Oialla chocolate paired with Yangarra Shiraz, McLaren Vale ($26), a dry but fruity bright shiraz, followed by Edmeades Late Harvest Zin 2006 ($16), and fortified Fonseca, Panascal, Port 2008. Of the three, I liked the chocolate best with the Edmeades, with its dessert-like, smooth and elegant concentrated sugar.

From there, we moved to the Bonnatt chocolates, also carried in NM's Epicure section. In the photos, it's easy to imagine devouring the little pieces of chocolate would be easy, but with the intensity of the chocolate and sugar from the wines, it wasn't easy keeping up with Okubo and Janet Candullo of JC Chocolate and Apriori, distributor of fine chocolate.

Usually at such tastings, it's easy to give up glasses to make way for the next batch of wines. Out of 8 glasses, I'll usually end up keeping the two I like. But this time around, I was loathe to give up any of my glasses, especially the tawny ports that work so well with chocolate. Okubo's choices were so novel and inspired, and I tried the various wines with other pieces of chocolate to come up with my own combinations.

There definitely needs to be more chocolate tastings on this level.

Chocolatier Rasmus Bo Bojeson shows boxes of bonbons, his newest offering.

In creating his chocolate, Bojeson said he was fortunate to have a botanist professor friend who retired to South America, who suggested he take a look at Bolivia when he asked if there were wild cacao trees growing anywhere in the world.

In Bolivia, he found trees—some more than 1,000 years old—grown with no cultivation, fertilization, pesticides or cutting, and producing the creamy, fruity, smooth non-bitter chocolate that we tasted in nib form. ("Oialla" is a popular girl's name in Bolivia.)

Fermented and sorted cacao is then sent to Bojeson in Denmark, where it is turned into simple 70 percent chocolate slabs and tablets with organic Brazilian cane sugar as the only additive.

Oialla was recently awarded a gold star at the Great Taste Award 2011, gastronomy’s version of the Oscars.  Bojeson was also just awarded “Best in the World” at the Gourmand World Cookbook Award in Paris for his chocolate cookbook "Sans for Chokolade."

Oialla Chocolate Criollo comes in boxes of 10 individually wrapped squares for $30, and 20 squares for $50. Visit www.bojesen.dk/OIALLA for more information.

From cacao bean and nibs to finished, wrapped Oialla chocolate. We were invited to study, smell and snap the chocolate pieces before allowing it to melt on our palates as part of the multi-sensory tasting experience.

Samplings of Bonnatt chocolates, which were paired with an array of red and port wines, as well as pale Ceretto, Moscato d'asti 2010.

Look at the legs on the Albala, Do PX 1985, which started with a white grape aged in oak for 20 years until it obtained a molasses hue, and rich, buttery sweetness. This $39 wine accompanied Bonnat Chuao 75 percent dark chocolate.

The Hungarian Royal Tokaji, 5 Puttonyons 2007 was also a treat, accompanying Bonnat Surabaya 65 percent milk chocolate, both with complimentary creaminess. Noble rot of botrytis dries the grapes to intensify the sweetness.