For the love of chocolate

“What you see before you, my friend, is the result of a lifetime of chocolate.”
So sits David Fletcher in his steel-rimmed glasses, his white chef’s shirt, with his white Mac laptop and white cup of coffee.

The chocolatier is perched in the corner of BLU Boy Chocolate Cafe and Cakery with only a few precise spots of chocolate dotting his shirt.

Fletcher started the tiny bakery, a space of muted reds, yellows and browns, in 2007 with his husband Scott Jackman and has become a sort of local celebrity.

His soft voice is hard to hear over the occasional crash of the coffee machine. Valentine’s Day is near, but you wouldn’t know it from the look of the cafe, even though chocolate is one of the holiday’s most famous associations. Fletcher is unapologetic.

“I struggle with the whole retail thing. I should already have hearts everywhere,” he says, waving his hands at the undecorated walls.

He said he really likes Valentine’s Day because he gets to change the cafe’s fare.
“My nature is to change things. I like to change without apologizing,” Fletcher said.
It all seems so fluid, but the culinary direction wasn’t an easy one for Fletcher to take.

Chocolate was always present in his life, though it wasn’t his focus. It was there during his childhood in Mannheim, Germany, where his mother’s family lives. It was there in high school, where he first started to realize his love for culinary arts.

It was there in the first couple years as a music major at the University of Iowa, where he played cello. It was there in medical school and during his 15 years as a physician. And it was there the night in the kitchen when he suddenly concluded that his life needed a change.

“I was tinkering with a recipe and I remember thinking, ‘I wonder if I can learn more about this ... I’m going to try this,’” Fletcher recalls.

After his revelation, Fletcher started flying to New York on weekends for a nine-month “pastry camp” at the Institute of Culinary Education while continuing to practice at the student health center during the week.

In 2005, he and Jackman took a class in Munich, where he learned specialty confectionery techniques, including how to blow sugar the way a glass worker blows glass. And in 2007, the couple opened the BLU Boy, whose name might sound strange but has a deep meaning. BLU stands for Boys Like Us, meaning boys like Fletcher and Jackman, who completely rerouted their lives long after they’d settled into a niche.

Fletcher said he’s had maybe three unhappy customers total. The worst complaint is that the coffee is a little cold. He’s never had a bridezilla. In short, chocolate makes people happy ... for the most part.

Plus, he said, chocolate’s just sexy.

“There’s an inherent sensual quality of chocolate,” Fletcher says, cupping his hands as if about to dip them into a liquid chocolate pool. “When you melt down a 10-pound pot and start working with it ... that’s pretty luscious.”