HI L L ST
IMAGES The Hill St boutique on All Saints’ Passage and chocolates from the collection. Photos courtesy of Alistair Grant (Bokeh Photographic)
When the brothers can’t source locally, they source the best, using a new grocery store based in Saffron Walden to ensure they get hold of the highest quality products. “For the quality of ingredients and what we’re creating, I think most people find that we’re good value for money,” Greg says. “If you compare us to a mass producer: some are using artificial ingredients, and have to consider a very long shelf life in their product. If you had 100 shops, it would be very difficult to do an artisan batch of 400 Maldon-salted caramel ganaches with that kind of freshness. That’s definitely something that we don’t wish to compromise on.” The brothers’ devotion to crafting flavour and exceptional quality isn’t just paying off with local audiences, it’s also seen them develop a following on the other side of the planet. “For the last two years we’ve been exporting our chocolates to Japan, to a wonderful Japanese client,” Greg says. “In Japan, they really respect
right location: “It’s only a small town, so to find the right spot and a landlord that would support a start-up business without a background... we certainly lost one or two locations,” Greg says. “But actually, it led us to this one particular spot on Hill Street, which has turned out to be the best place that we could have come across – a beautiful old listed building with a really supportive local landlord who wanted us to be successful and is helping us expand.” The brothers also took the opportunity to switch their name from the heavily French-influenced former title to Hill St, the name of the road their store calls home. “Although we really respect the background and the training Chris has, we felt we needed to launch ourselves as more of a British brand.” That Britishness extends through to the products they’re creating. Though inspired by French techniques, the brothers have always tried to evolve their chocolates to use as many local ingredients and flavours
as they can source. “There’s Maldon sea salt, the saffron is from just outside Saffron Walden, the fresh mint is from a little organic farm in Abington where we source a lot of our fruits, and the honey in ‘The Girls’ chocolate is from a chap called Derek who keeps bees in Wimbish. He just had a sign on the side of the road and when we went to visit his hives he said: ‘Do you want to come and meet the girls?’, which is where the name of the chocolate came from.”
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