Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1239297
NORTHSHOREMAG.COM 48 MAY 2020 Mark Lawler and Michael Nichols are sitting in Nichols' kitchen, discussing chocolate… with onions. "I can see where a green onion ganache would be good," Lawler muses. "Anything with those subtle light flavors, like citrus and garlic…" Nichols breaks in, "Well… garlic and chocolate. I don't know if that would work…." For the next few minutes, they banter about what kind of garlic might work with what kind of chocolate. "This is what we do all the time," Nichols says with a laugh. "It's fascinating." The two are partners in M. Cacao, a tiny chocolate shop with very big ambitions tucked inside Beach Plum Too florist in Newburyport. To Lawler and Nichols, the possibilities for chocolate are endless. Neither comes from a food background; instead they each drew on their past careers—Nichols as an engineer and Lawler, a stay-at-home dad whose previous experience includes working in the film indus- try in Los Angeles—to craft the idea behind M. Cacao. In fact, they don't even think of themselves as a chocolate shop, but rather a technology company that uses chocolate as a medium. I N D E P T H "We're really looking at the process of how you innovate new products quickly based on novel techniques," Nichols says. "And that's not a food-world expertise. That's a technology- world expertise." Case-in-point, the company's signature Thank You Honey Bee Bon Bon—raw wild- flower honey atop a praline of caramelized almonds and wildflower pollen, encased in Valrhona chocolate shaped like a beehive. The tiny treat packs an amazing number of flavors and textures, from the crunch of the almonds to the sweet viscous hit of honey and the snap and slight bitter edge of the chocolate casing. It's a treat that demands attention, lingering on your palate. "It's not just a candy," Lawler says. "You're tasting real food." It's also a complex bit of engineering—keep- ing that honey liquid atop the tiny disk of pra- line, and managing to enrobe the whole thing in chocolate. And that's what thrills Nichols, who decided to make an abrupt career switch during a family vacation to Peru. After visiting