HI L L ST
s w eet s p ot CHARLOTTE GRIFFITHS MEETS THE TALENTED BROTHERS BEHIND CAMBRIDGE’S NEW CHOCOLATIER, HILL ST
their families, and could find it back in the region where they grew up. Chris’s career and success as a chef led him to London and then to Paris, where he flourished as a pastry chef and then as a creator of exquisite chocolates, while Greg spent ten years climbing the rungs of the education ladder and was working as an assistant headteacher for a large secondary school in west London. “We had a little house quite near to the school, which was lovely, but it’s so competitive there to get own your child into a school. It all just fell at the right time for Chris and me, though starting a business with my brother making chocolates was not something I’d considered at all,” he laughs. Opportunity first knocked at Greg’s wedding to wife Natalie, when Chris offered to create chocolates for the couple’s favours. “I’d never actually tried one of his chocolates before then,” Greg says, “but our guests started stealing all the extra boxes – they were just so good – and that’s probably where I started to think properly about it. We’d had some conversations about going into business before, but at the wedding I thought – actually, these are amazing!” The two brothers jumped in feet
dimensional chocolate sculptures and striking graphic branding that boldly announces the brothers’ arrival in town. Hill St is very much a family affair. The brothers’ sister Lisa works as a designer in New York, but was able to assist with the brand direction that defines Hill St’s splendidly polished visual identity (realised by one of her friends and former colleagues, James Kape, founder of OMSE). “Our first shop on Hill St is very similar to this building,” Greg says, standing in the Cambridge store. “It’s listed, it has lovely gothic features – and all of these blocks in our design came from features of the building. So we used them to create our own icon that sums it all up,” he points at their neat logo, from top left through to bottom right: “Two guys, making chocolate, with love and craft, in Essex. These are supposed to be the three swords of Essex – an artistic version, anyway!” It’s quickly clear how passionate the two brothers are about this part of the UK: born and raised in Wendens Ambo, Greg and Chris lived in London and Paris respectively before realising they wanted a better quality of life for themselves and
f you’d told the Smith brothers a decade ago that, at the start of 2020, they’d be filming with Jamie Oliver and Jimmy Doherty in a Channel 4 feature devoted to their thriving chocolate business, they’d probably have chuckled in disbelief – but then, as Forrest Gump said, you never know what you’re going to get. Greg and Chris Smith
are the founders of Hill St, an artisanal chocolatier with two outlets: their flagship store on the eponymous street in the heart of Saffron Walden, and a new Cambridge boutique nestled in All Saints’ Passage. This new opening gleams bright candyfloss pink from floor to ceiling, with exquisite displays of intricately glossed individual chocolates, miniature three-
BELOW A bar of Hill St Milk 40%. Photo courtesy of Emilia Cocking
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