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Durian Chocolate: What It Tastes Like (and Why We Make It in Vancouver)
Few foods split a room like durian. Some people smell it and go weak at the knees; others smell it and leave. So when people find out we make a durian chocolate bar on Granville Island, the next question is always the same: what does it actually taste like? Here’s our honest answer, plus a…
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Bean-to-Bar Chocolate in Vancouver: What It Means and How to Spot the Real Thing
“Bean-to-bar” is printed on a lot of chocolate wrappers these days. Sometimes it means exactly what it says. Sometimes it’s just a nice-sounding phrase. We’ve been making chocolate from raw cacao beans on Granville Island since 2015, so here’s our plain-language take on what the term means, why it matters, and how to tell the…
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A Local’s Guide to Chocolate in Vancouver (From People Who Make It)
Full disclosure right up front: we make chocolate. Kasama is a bean-to-bar chocolate maker on Granville Island, so we’re not a neutral guide — but we taste everything, we know this scene from the inside, and Vancouver’s chocolate community is genuinely collaborative. Here’s our honest map of it. Vancouver is quietly a great chocolate city…
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Tableya & Sikwate: The Philippines’ Original Chocolate Tradition
Ask a Filipino grandmother about chocolate and she probably won’t mention bars at all. She’ll tell you about tableya — dark, rustic tablets of pure roasted cacao — and the thick, steaming cup of sikwate they melt into. This is the Philippines’ original chocolate tradition, and it’s the inspiration behind one of our favourite things…
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What Is Muscovado Sugar? The Philippine Sweetener We Grind Into Chocolate
If you’ve ever tasted a brown sugar so dark and complex it verged on caramel, toffee and smoke all at once, you may have already met muscovado. It’s one of our favourite ingredients — and one of the Philippines’ great culinary exports. Here’s what it is, how it’s made, and why we grind it into…
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Filipino Chocolate, Made in Vancouver: Our Philippine Cacao Story
When people ask what makes Kasama different from other chocolate makers in Vancouver, the answer starts 11,000 kilometres away, on a family property in the northern Philippines. How a Filipino family farm started a Vancouver chocolate company Back in 2015, Vince’s father Mario sent a photo from the family property of what looked like mangoes…