The baking bug hit Adam Turoni around the age of 8 with cookies at grandma’s house.
Six years later, he found himself in his first profes-
sional kitchen.
Two years after that, he was a head pastry chef.
Now, at 26, the Taylor native is among the finest practitioners of his art.
That’s the opinion of the people at Dessert Professional magazine, which recently named him one of the Top 10 Chocolatiers in North America. The publication is considered a marquee name in the baking industry.
This is just the latest bit of notoriety for Turoni, the owner of Chocolat by Adam Turoni, which has two locations in Savannah, Georgia. He’s also had write-ups in Town and Country, Esquire and Southern Living magazines.
“I’ve been getting (Dessert Professional) for years,” Turoni said during a recent interview done not long before he and his staff went into their usual pre-Valentine’s Day chocolate-making marathon.
“That magazine features people really pushing the envelope, so it’s all so incredible and so humbling and so exciting,” he said. “To be recognized in this magazine, the one read by my peers in the industry, is so incredible to me.”
A couple of weeks ago, Turoni returned to his old stomping grounds at Riverside High School to talk to vocational students, a few of whom are in the culinary arts.
While doing a live truffle-making demonstration, he offered the kids an inspiring tale of having a goal and seeing it come to fruition.
“When you walk into kindergarten in the Riverside School District, we ask you to follow and chase your dreams — and dream big. And this is somebody who surely took this advice,” said Riverside superintendent Paul Brennan. “He’s only scratched the surface of where he’s going to be.”
Started young
Turoni, Brennan said, “is a guy that was passionate about things from a young age.”
He took that initial childhood love of baking to the next level when he decided to enroll in Career Technology Center of Lackawanna County’s culinary arts program as a ninth grader at Riverside.
“And I always watched Food TV, and thought, ‘You know, that might be something I’d be interested in,’ ” Turoni said. “I knew right off I wanted to be on the culinary side. But I didn’t know how broad it was. I didn’t know it included baking.”
At 14, he landed a job at the former Fusion restaurant in the Mall at Steamtown. From there, he went to the former Michaelangelo’s in Clarks Summit.
His initial experience in the kitchen was on the cooking line, but he figured out pretty quickly that it wasn’t for him. The pastry area, though, spoke to him in a way where he felt his talent could truly come alive.
His next stop was Isabella Restaurant and Bar in Wilkes-Barre, where, at 17, he became the head pastry chef.
“I’d leave school at noon, and then go work on the pastry line, getting all the desserts ready for the night,” he said. “It really provided me with that real world experience. And it was just so normal to me, working a 40-hour week. Any of the money I made I stored away. I paid for my car in cash.”
By then, he was sure he would make pastry-making his life’s work, and was accepted into the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.
The year and a half he spent there was “intense, sometimes grueling.” But that was good, he said, because it separated those who were fully committed to pursuing a career in the culinary arts from those who weren’t.
Turoni got to work on research and development for one of his chef’s cookbooks. And he really hit his stride when he got into the chocolate-making phase of his education. From the moment he first tried it, “I knew it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
He found the process required a high amount of deep concentration, but there was also something meditative about it.
“I had never before made a truffle in my life,” he said. “I loved baking and pastry from the beginning. When I had chocolate, it was one of those things where you step back and say, ‘Whoa.’ I was so grateful that I felt, ‘This is for me.’ Not too many people get to have that in their lives.”
“There are times where I’m dipping chocolate or decorating, and people are talking to me, and I don’t hear them at all,” he added. “Once you understand the ingredients, you can manipulate them and make them do what you want.”
West Coast work
While at CIA, Turoni had the chance to do an internship at the fabled Berkeley, California, restaurant Chez Panisse, known among foodies as the birthplace of the “slow food movement.”
He said owner Alice Waters gave him the opportunity to stay upon the internship’s completion, but Turoni was committed to completing his education and pursue a career in chocolate making.
Two weeks after graduating from CIA in June 2009, he and his mother, Chris Vangarelli, packed up his car and headed to Savannah.
“And I dropped him off with no job. He said, ‘Mom, I’ll be OK.’ I was scared to death,” Vangarelli said with a laugh.
Turoni had a friend living there. Also, he figured Savannah was a good city with a lot going on, and a place where he could start small and branch out without the competition of a bigger city like New York.
He landed a job at a retail store that served lunch, convincing the owner to allow him to make his chocolates in-house. The confections developed a following, and, in 2011, Turoni felt confident enough to try and open his own wholesale business.
Before long, he was landing clients like Savannah’s boutique Andaz hotel and cooking world superstar Paula Deen’s company.
His retail business opened in October 2012. By then, he said, “all my recipes were perfected,” including his signature truffles, which come in such eclectic varieties as raspberry chambord, mint julep and creme brulee.
Since then, his retail business has grown to include a second shop in Savannah.
“He has come a long way,” Vangarelli said. “I walked into the second store and I just started crying. I can’t believe what he’s doing.”
All the confections, Turoni said, are made by him and his staff in-house, with top-quality ingredients. The chocolate he works with is 72 to 74 percent, and tends to be a little grainier than what many people are accustomed to, he said.
“To me, it’s incredible. It’s more complex,” he said. “You need to use a high-quality chocolate to get a high-quality product. ... I like to stick to the artisanal way.”
The business is now poised to grow more given the publicity of the Dessert Professional ranking. Turoni does online shipping through his website, www.chocolatat.com, and continues to add big-name customer accounts, Gulfstream being one of them.
He’d like to expand the wholesale operation, and, with any luck, start “being known around the country as a household name for chocolate.”
“We’ll never be a factory kitchen, though,” Turoni said. “I never realized I would be at this point. I just want to keep up the quality of the product and inspire others.”