Four years ago, Menlo Park-based chef Michael Sigmon was visiting his local farmers market, where a vendor was selling custom chocolate, when inspiration struck. He decided he wanted to try making his own chocolate from scratch.
Sigmon is no stranger to restaurant kitchens. He has worked at North Carolina’s fine-dining Fearrington House, as a private chef for Chris Webber of the Sacramento Kings and at his own Windmill Cafe in Santa Cruz. But he was ready for a new chapter.
“I’ve been in kitchens so long. My body’s done with that,” he says.
Now his Minée Chocolate shop sells its wares — five types of bean-to-bar chocolates plus coffee beans — at Sigona’s Markets in Palo Alto and Redwood City and Willows Market in Menlo Park.
Sigmon sources his cacao from an organic co-op in Ecuador, where the beans produce a deep chocolate with tropical fruit notes. The flavor is “the aromatic essence of what the jungle could be like on a warm day,” he says. Then he spends five days grinding the beans. The result is an organic, European-style chocolate bar with a velvety mouthfeel that runs $6, compared to the $12 that many high-end chocolate bars cost.
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The artistic drawings on the chocolate bar labels pay homage to different female figures. The woman on the milk chocolate bar, for instance, represents Sigmon’s mom, Marsha, who is shown holding a glass of milk, because milk chocolate is her favorite. And the name Minée is a blend of Sigmon’s first name, Michael, and that of his partner and co-owner, Renée Fadiman, who is the daughter of two Peninsula notables, Oscar-nominated documentarian Dorothy and psychedelics researcher James Fadiman. Their next chocolate creation, a white chocolate bar with coconut and caramel, is named after Dorothy and is expected to debut this spring.
Details: Minée Chocolate (and coffee) is available online and at Sigona’s Market (399 Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto and 2345 Middlefield Road in Redwood City) and Willows Market (60 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park); teamminee.com.
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