Samuel Maruta, who possessed an unquenchable adventurous spirit despite his background in finance, found himself rejuvenating in Saigon with his family. There, he crossed path with Vincent Mourou, who had just left behind his flourishing advertising career in San Francisco for a soul-searching odyssey in Vietnam. Their serendipitous encounter during a 2010 jungle camping trip ignited a shared desire to break away from the ordinary.
Read transcript with audio descriptions
Vincent Mourou — 00:00
[upbeat music] When we f-found out there was cocoa growing in Vietnam, you know, the question was, why isn't anyone doing anything interesting with it? We were taken by this idea of wow, you know, there's cocoa. We could possibly make chocolate. Could we make the best chocolate possible from it? So we set forth on this trail, uh, towards answering that question.
Samuel Maruta — 00:25
It's really about self-discovery. [laughs] You know? [upbeat music] And the reason why we were doing this here in Vietnam is because you got a real sense that you could do things, uh, here.
Vincent Mourou — 00:40
I mean, when you live in a place that's... that has goodness, that has a certain richness and culinary tradition, you can only think that the chocolate is going to be very good.
Vincent Mourou — 00:50
Hello. I'm a cocoa pod. I have 30 to 40 beans inside. Rah.
Samuel Maruta — 00:58
Some people buy cocoa beans. We hunt cocoa beans. [laughs]
Vincent Mourou — 01:06
[upbeat music] To get the best beans, we have to get our asses in the car [laughs] and drive out to the countryside. [laughs]
Samuel Maruta — 01:18
So we don't rely on a middleman to bring something to us. That's the secret, really, to what we do. [door thuds] Whoa. [door thuds] Easy, easy. [door thuds] People have this idea that cocoa, regardless of where it came from, was going to end up in the same Hershey or Cadbury's bar. There's been a move away from that.
Vincent Mourou — 01:39
[upbeat music] We realized that we were getting beans, uh, that had very different flavors. [grunts] Better. [dog barks] The beans were coming from various provinces in the south of Vietnam. It was quite exciting for us.
Samuel Maruta — 01:58
For example, we have beans from Ba Ria that have a red fruit profile. We have beans from the Mekong Delta that have [beans clattering] slightly exotic tastes, like licorice or cinnamon or honey, things that you don't normally find in cocoa.
Vincent Mourou — 02:17
This is gonna be good.
Samuel Maruta — 02:18
There's a real spiciness to it, old spice. [laughs]
Vincent Mourou — 02:21
We decided that we would expose that, so each one of our bars reflects the diversity of taste that we find in the cocoa beans. [people cheering] We wanna be excited by the beans that we buy. And it gives us an idea of what the chocolate can possibly end up becoming. [gentle music]
Interviewer — 02:43
What's the spirit of Marou?
Vincent Mourou — 02:45
The sp- Yeah, so the spirit of Marou...
Samuel Maruta — 02:51
Authenticity.
Vincent Mourou — 02:53
Fun.
Samuel Maruta — 02:54
Adventure.
Vincent Mourou — 02:56
We wanna do something really good.
Samuel Maruta — 02:58
Cambridge graduates in, uh, Edwardian times, their big philosophical question was, being good superior to doing good? I think at Marou Chocolate we answer this question by saying tasting good is the one that takes precedence, and by tasting good, we are doing good and we are being good. [laughs]
Vincent Mourou — 03:24
All right.
Samuel Maruta — 03:24
I, I'm sure we can rephrase that. [laughs]
Vincent Mourou — 03:27
[laughs] That was cool, actually. I liked that. [upbeat music]
A Google search for "cacao plantation" led Sam and Vincent to a farm in Ba Ria Province, an addressless adventure that set the foundation for Marou Faiseurs de Chocolat. On the ferry ride back to Saigon, they made a solemn vow to bring life to this chocolate-making journey, starting with just a blender, an oven, and cake tins in Sam's kitchen.
Samuel and Vincent continue to rely on a tight network of small farmers from whom they buy the best beans, one bag at a time, for a premium price.
Marou Faiseurs de Chocolat stands as one of the pioneering "bean-to-bar" enterprises in Asia and one of the few worldwide crafting chocolate at its source. What began as the dream of two adventurous Frenchmen has evolved into a brand of pure dark chocolate, entirely crafted from the finest ingredients Vietnam has to offer.
