Living in a bubble may give you comfort and security, but for Tissa Aunilla, even from her days as a successful lawyer, she had thought of another way to realise her real aspirations. Years of fondness with confectioneries led her to the decision to learn more about chocolate. “I even tore down some par ts of my home to make space for the equipment and bought a marble sur face”, she says. With the support of her brother Ir van Helmi of Anomali Coffee, Tissa trained under professional chocolatiers and enrolled to Felchlin in Switzerland for an intensive two-week program. Several years of improving her chocolate making skills and researching on the business, Pipiltin Cocoa opened its doors in 2013.
Pipiltin Cocoa’s bean-to-bar concept is among the very few found in Indonesia. Despite being the world’s third largest producer of chocolate, the level of consumption is still much lower here than in Western countries. One way to solve this, says Tissa, is to teach them about chocolate and it starts from the sensor y test. It’s an investment of its own to introduce more people to chocolate appreciation. This is done with a new chocolate factor y on Jalan Barito – where visitors attend cooking classes, observe how chocolate is being made, and more.
Back to the cafe, it is more than pretty and lush chocolates. From plated desser ts that utilise molecular gastronomic techniques, Pipiltin introduces the application of cakes and pastry to pair with its chocolate creations. With the dessert appreciation scene on the rise, it rides the wave of this momentum with a lineup of savour y dishes. Finger foods, salad, poultry items, oxtail, pasta to sandwich or burger; everything was designed to be in tandem with desserts where one can have best of both worlds. On the beverage side, aside coffee, one should definitely expect chocolatebased stuff!
In a bid to spread the goodness of chocolate, the company has collaborated with several single-origin chocolate farmers from Aceh, Java, Bali and Flores. Exporters from abroad have taken a lot of interest of Pipiltin Cocoa after Tissa’s campaign abroad to introduce Indonesian chocolate. “We run a strict standardisation procedure where our producers supply us fermented beans with specific humidity level and other conditions. However, issues with single origins might include logistics or delayed harvest due to force majeure that is why we are particular with the procedure;”she explains.
To sum it up, a lineup like this is deemed necessary so that people would be enticed to tr y something new from time to time. For Pipiltin Cocoa, an evolving desser t menu related to chocolate compliments its chocolate bars, chocolate nibs, and creations that Jakartans may never thought to come from Indonesian cocoa.
