“It felt important to me to help preserve and honor that culture.”

—KATRINA MARKOFF, founder of Vosges Haut-Chocolat, who was inspired by a Naga necklace to create a curry and coconut truffle

Katrina Markoff thought she was on track to become a professional chef. After completing culinary school in Paris in 1996, she spent nine months traveling around the world, cooking in restaurants. But she soon realized that she wasn’t cut out for that life and wanted to do something else—she just didn’t know what. At loose ends, Markoff returned home and was working for her uncle’s e-commerce company in Dallas when she received a gift from a traveling companion, one that inspired what would become her $25 million company, Vosges Haut-Chocolat. WE WERE TRAVELING IN HONG KONG. I saw this very expensive necklace, from the Naga tribes in India. I wanted it, even though, I thought, I can’t afford to get that. But I kept thinking about buying it. So I went back the next day, and the necklace was gone.

My friend, it turned out, had bought it for me. She sent it to me when I got back to the States. I had thought the necklace was made of shells, but then I met an archaeologist who knew about the Nagaland area, in northeastern India, and he told me that it was made of tiger teeth.

I started researching the Nagalands, and I learned that the culture of the Naga people was being endangered. It felt important to me to help preserve and honor that culture. That night, I went through my kitchen and all the ingredients that I’d stockpiled for a dessert cookbook project. I had coconut and curry— common ingredients in the Nagalands. So I started making a curry coconut milk chocolate truffle, and I named it Naga.

That was the first time it occurred to me that chocolate could be a medium for storytelling about things that have true meaning for me. That night, I created 20 chocolate recipes. Dallas was not a food town 20 years ago outside of barbecue. I brought this chocolate, with flavors like wasabi and curry, to the office the next day. The people in the office went from thinking it was going to be disgusting to total surprise and delight and curiosity for more.

That’s when I also saw that chocolate could be a way of getting people to open their minds to new ideas. That was what started the business.

RESPECTING TRADITIONS People of Nagaland, in northeastern India, wearing traditional warrior garb.

Wearing Tribute A necklace from the Naga people, here wearing traditional dress, inspired Vosges founder Katrina Markoff to research their culture—and develop her first chocolate.