Partnership Is the Secret Ingredient for the North Fork Chocolate Company

Some things just work well together. Think coffee and cream, peanut butter and jelly, chocolate chip cookies and milk. Think Ann Corley and Steve Amaral, the co-owners of North Fork Chocolate Company.

Though they’re not often found in the same place at the same time — Amaral primarily manages their Riverhead location, while Corley holds down their Mattituck spot — theirs is a partnership that thrives on complementary skills and interests. Amaral is the artistic genius behind many of the business’s recipes and products, while Corley is the marketing and retail guru who makes the business make sense.

The business partners met while working for the same East End hospitality company, and in 2012 left to launch North Fork Chocolate Company together. “Steve had an epiphany,” Corley recalled. “He just said to me one day, ‘I want to make chocolate.’”

Amaral calls it more of a vision — a message that came to him while he was meditating on his off-season career options in between summers filled with catering jobs. “So I went on ‘YouTube University’ and started figuring out how to make chocolate,” he said. “It took a year to figure out, and here we are.”

They began at the Stony Brook Calverton Food Business Incubator, putting in long hours working the farmers markets to build a following. Then came a pop-up shop in Tanger Outlets and, for nine years, a storefront in Aquebogue that was rather successful until the building’s owners decided in 2022 to sell. Both current locations opened in 2023.

The cheerful Mattituck shop is where the fudge action is, as well as Liège waffles made fresh all day, and a sunny space for events and parties that doubles as a retail shop for homemade crafts and other independently produced food products. Both locations also serve coffee and ice cream, but the Riverhead location is a cozier, all-vegan, and mostly gluten-free version of Panera Bread that serves breakfast and lunch. The Riverhead kitchen, which was once a Papa John’s pizza joint, is where the bulk of the chocolates are made.

That’s where Alahna Visser comes in. She’s a Culinary Institute of America-trained chocolatier who partners with Amaral to develop and produce many of their bonbons, truffles, bars, and other products. “They’re the dynamic duo, always keeping up with the trends and learning new techniques, and they really complement each other,” Corley said.

Visser said she loves her job. “We always get to play around with chocolate. It’s a happy place,” she said. “We’re always making something new, like the Dubai bars.”

Dubai chocolate, a popular food find from — where else? — TikTok, is flying off the shelves at North Fork Chocolate Company. Get there early if you’re hoping to try their local take on this viral treat, because they often sell out of it. Amaral reverse-engineered the recipe via trial-and-error last December ahead of a visit by a crew from a weekly television show that focuses on the East End.

“His production guy said, ‘You have to make something.’ I didn’t know what to make,” Amaral recalled. “Alahna said, ‘We should make the Dubai bar.’”

Another delicacy here is the chocolate ice cream made straight from the cacao bean, with a texture similar to a classic French glace. “That’s what’s really special here, more than anything else. It’s the first thing someone should try if they’ve never been here before,” Amaral said.

Then there are the truffles and bonbons. Corley explained the difference between these two presentations: “It’s called a truffle because it resembles the shape of the mushroom that grows in the forest. But bonbons are shaped — they’re molded into shapes or squares, while truffles are always round.”

Their top-selling bonbon is called “Salty Dawg,” featuring pecan-molasses caramel with truffle sea salt in milk chocolate. On the “dark side” of the menu, their “Ice Cream Sundae” bonbon is the most popular. “We take our vanilla ice cream, turn it into a ganache, add a layer of fudge, and dip it in dark chocolate,” Corley said. A “Liquid Caramel” bonbon is another fan favorite, with a fusion of milk and dark chocolate on the outside and a gooey caramel center.

Speaking of the decadent insides, “a lot of people say what they really like about us is we use local ingredients for the centers,” Corley said. “Cacao beans don’t grow on Long Island, so that’s not possible, but we work with the local vineyards, breweries, and farms, and we get products from them to turn them into the centers.”

“Rejoyce” is made with chardonnay from Pellegrini Vineyards in Cutchogue, while Duck Walk’s blueberry dessert wine features prominently in the “Port” bonbon variety. Clovis Point Vineyard contributes its port wine for the ganache in the “Artifact” truffle. The Rough Rider whisky from Long Island Spirits in Calverton gets blended into both a bonbon and a bar; the distillery’s limoncello and espresso vodka are also used by North Fork Chocolate. Strawberries, blackberries, honey — the East End ingredient list goes on.

Then there are the bars, including varieties made with fig and black pepper, goat milk, sugar free (sweetened with monkfruit), sea salt, and red wine, and good, old-fashioned milk chocolate and dark chocolate ranging from 65 to 85 percent cacao. These dip deeper into the luxury market than your everyday Hershey’s bars do — like the Rolls-Royce of local chocolates. Sophisticated, and they go real fast.

“The difference is that we use everything pure and natural, so you can really taste chemicals in other brands,” Corley said. “Bars from the stores, they have stabilizers and fillers that give them a longer shelf life. You don’t know how long it’s out there for. We make everything in small batches, and it’s only out there for two weeks, so when you buy a product from North Fork Chocolate, it’s fresh. It hasn’t been on a shelf for six months.”

Wholesale to markets makes up about half of the business, with clients including Schiavoni’s Market in Sag Harbor, L&W Market and Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton and Balsam Farms in Amagansett. They recently completed an order of 1,200 bags of chocolate-covered espresso beans for an upscale restaurant brand, though Amaral acknowledged that order tested their capacity.

“We have equipment, but it’s not mass production equipment. Everything’s done by hand,” he said. “I would not be happy if this was that kind of industrial place all the time.”

Custom work is another big chunk of the business. In April, for instance, they created a custom gender-reveal dessert: a big, hollow chocolate Easter egg filled with marshmallow Peeps of a certain color — a closely guarded secret as of press time.

“Whatever someone wants, we make it,” Visser said.

The upshot, Amaral said, is that he hopes to be making chocolate with Corley, Visser and their team on the East End for a long time to come.

“It’s a happy place,” he said. “Everybody here smiles.”