With more Michelin stars and Gault Millau points than anywhere else in the country, the Lake Geneva region is the gastronomic heartland of Switzerland, but you don't have to eat out to enjoy the finest Swiss food. In the tiny village of Bougy-Villars, near Nyon, chocolatier Tristan Carbonatto has created an exquisite little chocolate shop (00 41 21 807 2126, chocolatier-tristan.ch). Although the streets are quiet, his shop is always busy - and when you taste his wares, you realise why.
Tristan started making chocolate in the back room of his shop 10 years ago. When I arrive he's busy out the back, making a chocolate windmill. "Tout est possible," he says, but it's not just his sculptures that are special - it's also the ingredients: the best Venezuelan cocoa beans, Brazilian almonds, even lavender from his own garden. He began with 10 varieties; now he has more than 100, adapted to the seasons: raisins in autumn, lemons in winter, rosemary in spring and myrtle in the summertime. "You always want to try new recipes," he says. Some things don't work, but there's no limit to his imagination. He gives me one to try. "Pepper from Nepal," he explains. "Chocolate and pepper - you wouldn't think they'd go together." But they do.
"From the very beginning I always asked my customers to taste and try," he says, as we eat freshly made chocolate, seasoned with the almonds I saw him roasting when I came in. "I listen to what they tell me and that's how my new varieties develop." Customers bring him new recipes and ingredients - honey from Tasmania, pistachios from Turkey. "It's very international but nothing is exported," he adds. So, if you want to taste his green tea chocolate (and if you love chocolate, you really ought to) you'll have to go there yourself.
