There is this long delicious deliberation when you look at a bonbon from the chefs at EJ BonBons and Confections in Woodstock.
The handcrafted, hand-painted bonbons are a sight to behold. They are works of art, but they are edible art, offered in a wide variety of flavors. So, at some point, you have to eat the art.
And you won’t regret it. The rich taste. The smooth texture. The painted outer shell is not a shell at all, just a smooth chocolate home that the different flavors are poured into.
This is all the creation of Emily Kellogg and Pierre Pouplard. Kellogg is a Woodstock native and Onteora High graduate. Pouplard worked at some of the most prestigious establishments in Paris, including Le Meurice Paris and La Tour d’Argent Paris. He came to America in 2016 and had been the sous chef at the Per Se, a Michelin three-starred restaurant located near Central Park in New York City.
Kellogg was the chocolatier at Per Se and then worked at Gotham Chocolates in the Gotham Bar & Grill in the West Village. The couple met at Per Se and have since become engaged.
Restaurants were closed for most of 2020 because of the COVID pandemic. That led them to talking about the future.
“We knew we were both be going back to work, but I think, working in the city, you get so used to work, work, work, work, work. You don’t have a lot of time to slow down,” Kellogg said. “We were thinking, ‘Okay, maybe we don’t want to be working …”
“… for somebody,” Pouplard said, finishing the sentence.
“We were visiting my mom one weekend and saw this space available,” she said, “and we thought, ‘Oh, that would be the good size for a chocolate shop.'”
They signed the lease for the shop at 2 Old Forge Road, across from the Village Green in March, and opened on Memorial Day weekend.
“We just totally went for it,” Kellogg said. “It was natural, organic. It was like what was meant to be just happened.”
Added Pouplard, “It didn’t make sense for us to open up a restaurant. We said it didn’t make sense right now, but a chocolate shop makes sense.”
It is a two-person operation, handling the storefront and the manufacturing. Pouplard had no previous experience with chocolate until now. Kellogg began three years ago at Per Se and had to be literally dragged kicking and screaming to the station.
“They have different stations. I worked ice cream, cakes, service and production,” she said, “and then, eventually … so many people in pastry want to work the chocolate station. I went, ‘No, thank you. I don’t want to.’
“I never wanted to work with chocolate. It stressed me out. I thought it was messy. It was finicky. It required so much more tunnel vision than I would care to dedicate to it. I had a couple of mental breakdowns and then I fell in love with it.
“I’ve texted my chef from there multiple times and I was like, ‘I don’t know how to thank you for pushing to me to go outside my comfort zone.’ It has led to this.”
Customers can see into the back room where the eight-hour process for each type of bonbon is conceived. And, on the wall where the selections and prices are, there is the saying, “Life happens. Chocolate helps.”
The couple figured there would be some downtime after the late-May opening, but it looks like the bonbons, chocolate-covered nuts, nougat, wrapped caramel and pâte de fruit are big hits.
“It’s been very good,” Pouplard said. “The first weekend was crazy. We couldn’t keep up with filling the trays.”
“We hit the ground running,” Kellogg said. “We had a busy summer.”
They expected a slow summer and a quieter fall, especially when schools reopened, but neither happened. There were plenty of activities in and around Woodstock, including fall foliage leaf peeping.
‘There has been a ton of traffic, even on the weekdays,” Kellogg said. “We’ve been very fortunate.”
The online store through its www.ejchocolates.com site was launched in September.
“We’ve had people who have encountered them at a dinner party or somebody who got them as gifts,” Kellogg said about their product, which is sold in distinctive packing with the EJ logo on them. (The EJ stands for her first and last name: Emily Jane).
The four- and 12-piece boxes of bonbons are packaged like jewelry.
“I think part of the experience is the visual aspect,” she said. “They look good and they taste good.”
“We always have 12 flavors,” Pouplard said. “We’ll try new flavors every other month or two months.”
In October, the flavors included caramel apple, peanut butter and jelly, passion fruit, dark chocolate, vanilla, cranberry orange, black forest, raspberry matcha, hazelnut praline, salted caramel, London fog, and bourbon maple pecan. They received a major holiday order from a New York City jewelry company: just under 20,000 bonbons with 18 different flavors.
As the temperature drops, the store is now offering hot chocolate.
“We’re planning on having artisan ice cream for next summer,” Pouplard noted.
Right now, they are prepping for holidays, planning on gift boxes and specialties.
“We try to have something for everybody,” Kellogg said about their unique confections. “It’s the perfect gift for someone who has everything or for someone who just needs something.
“We put our caring into our chocolate and we hope that they taste just as good as they look.”
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EJ BonBons and Confections in Woodstock serves up edible, tasty art - The Daily Freeman
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