Meet Melbourne's New Artisan Sweet Spot, Atypic Chocolate

Handmade chocolate has a new Melbourne home, and everyone with Willy Wonka fantasies has a new spot to visit. Opening at South Melbourne Market, Atypic Chocolate combines two joys every sweet-lover can't get enough of: eating artisanal delights, and watching them come to fruition.

The chocolatory is a labour of love for French-trained pastry chef-turned-chocolatier Charles Lemai and his business partner Chi, as inspired by the former's trip to Vietnam in 2016. There, he met a chocolate maker who introduced him to the bean-to-bar concept — and while all choccies make their way from raw cocoa beans to mouth-watering morsels, it's the fact that Atypic does it all in-house that makes it different.

In the store's 42 square metre space, customers can treat both their tastebuds and their eyes as everything from single-origin chocolate tablets (in milk, dark and white options) to chocolate pastries (think brownies, of course, plus the mounds of meringue and praline that are hazelnut merveilleux) are made on the spot. And we don't just mean witnessing the finishing touches either. Whether Atypic's staff are roasting, dehusking, grinding the nibs, refining flavours and textures, or molding, it all happens through the stall's glass windows.

Focusing on organic ingredients, and using direct-trade cacao beans sourced from small farms in the Solomon Islands, Haiti, Brazil and Madagascar, their menu also includes European-style hot chocolate in dark, spicy and matcha white chocolate varieties, with chocolate soft serve due to be added at a later date. As will new chocolate varieties, with Lemai eager to experiment with flavours, fillings and textures — and to share his choc creations with the hungry masses.

Find Atypic Chocolate at Stall 170 in Aisle D, South Melbourne Market, corner of Coventry and Cecil streets, South Melbourne. For more information, visit their website or Facebook page.