Cacao farmers and chocolate makers in Thailand’s “capital in the north,” Chiang Mai, are giving European chocolatiers a run for their money.
Sipping on the most flavorsome drinking chocolate I’ve ever imbibed in my cocoa-loving life, I try to pinpoint just what makes this mug of silky goodness so delicious. Is it the full-bodied flavor? The fruity hints roasted into a perfect balance of chocolaty sweetness? Or just that I’m not in Switzerland or Belgium, but at Khom Chocolatier House, an incredible craft chocolate spot in an ancient town in Northern Thailand?
Khom is a quaint cocoa-processing cafe and bakery tucked away on a quiet street next to one of the famous temples in the heart of Chiang Mai, Thailand’s so-called “capital in the north.” The drink that’s left me questioning everything I know about chocolate is called Sawasdee Jao, which is fueled by Khom’s house-blended 75% dark chocolate that won a silver medal in the World Craft Drinking Chocolate category at the 2024 International Chocolate Awards—more or less the Oscars for chocolatiers.
The owner, Jane Pimchanok Duangsri, is a young, sharply knowledgeable chocolate connoisseur who opened Khom in 2018. “I can’t drink coffee,” she laments with a humble smile, “so I made a cafe for people like me.” Alongside Sawasdee Jao, Duangsri offers a lengthy drinking chocolate menu that provides the origins of each of the cocoa beans (the majority of which come from Northern Thailand), the processor, the roast level, and a small diagram of points for body, bitterness, and astringency.
Thailand, of course, isn’t exactly known for consuming chocolate or growing cacao, the yellow pods from which cocoa is made. Its main exports are rubber, tapioca, tuna, and pineapple. That said, since the late 1970s, a slow and steady coffee revolution has been brewing domestically (pun unavoidable), particularly in Bangkok and Chiang Mai.
Off the back of the flourishing coffee scene, a perfect hybrid cacao that flourishes in Chiang Mai was developed from beans sourced in Peru and the Philippines, suited to grow in the notably less tropical mountainsides of Northern Thailand. Ever since, the region has experienced a rapid boom in homegrown craft chocolate with boutique makers and large-scale producers operating side-by-side—both redefining the country’s relationship to chocolate.
Duangsri’s all-women team brews their bean-to-bar liquid chocolate in a small on-site factory, its stark, white walls visible through a glass window in the back of her colorful cafe. They work together to serve customers and run the factory; meanwhile, a baker makes the decadent chocolate cakes on offer. “All four of my staff work on roasting and conching the beans to make the drinking chocolate,” Duangsri tells me. “It takes three days to make one batch. We’re like a family—we work together, and we travel together.”
The bigger craft chocolate player in town—and indeed Thailand overall—is Siamaya Chocolate. It’s essentially the country’s answer to Hershey, and it places a serious emphasis on Thai flavors. A sampling of its milk chocolate candy bar selection: Thai Bullet Chilli, Peanut Curry, Khao Soi Curry, and Thai Tea. “Our first one was Tom Kar Coconut Curry flavor,” explains Siamaya co-founder Kristian Levinsen. “That was the first step on the ladder of infusing waves of flavor into the bar so that it’s an all-rounded experience. We wanted to add a Thai touch to the chocolate that makes it interesting. That makes Siamaya actually have a reason to be on this planet—not just copy-pasting, but creating something new and unique.”
In fact, he tells me, “We chose the name Siamaya because it incorporates Siam and Maya; it shows we’ve taken a traditional approach to chocolate-making while imbuing Thailand into it.” (Siam being the former name of Thailand, and the Mayans being the forefathers of chocolate production.)
Levinsen founded Siamaya with his friend and business partner Neil Ransom in 2017. “When we first started, I’d go out and get a bag of 10 kilos of cacao beans and strap it on my motorbike to bring it home,” he laughs. “But over the last few years, there’s been an explosion of interest in chocolate in the Thai consciousness—both when it comes to makers and to buyers.” And so, Siamaya now produces three to four tonnes of chocolate bars a month, all of which are stocked in major Thai grocery stores and the huge duty-free chain King Power.
Siamaya is a completely Fair Trade company and works exclusively with one local farmer, Pathom Meekaew, who produces tonnes of cocoa beans a month for Levinsen and Ransom. “Initially, we thought we’d have to import cacao beans, but we soon discovered they were already growing here. Pathom came through on every promise that he made to us. We expanded and developed with him—and thanks to him.”
Pathom has gone from working exclusively for Siamaya to running his own ever-expanding company Thai Coffee and Cocoa from the sprawling fields surrounding Lampang, the neighboring city to Chiang Mai. “I was originally an agronomist in the coffee industry,” he tells me, “but I saw a lot of opportunity in cocoa production. Cocoa farming started over 10 years ago, but it’s much bigger now. Every province in Thailand farms it. I’m very happy working with cocoa; there’s so much room for growth, and the price keeps going up and up and up.”
Fair Trade and employment opportunities for the local community are also core values at Cocoa Valley, a gorgeous resort in Nan, the mountainous, historically rich town five hours east of Chiang Mai. Cocoa Valley is tiny in comparison to Siamaya’s operation; it basically consists of just three things: a boutique guesthouse, a chocolate-focused restaurant/store, and a small workshop. The owner, Manoon Thanawang, launched Cocoa Valley three years ago, returning to his hometown from Bangkok with the goal of opening a local business that would help his local village, Pua Nan.
Thanawang has a number of cocoa farms around Nan, a wildly scenic rural area. As he gives me a tour of the resort, I gawk at the stand-alone bathtubs that overlook the alpine scenery. “This is the dream,” he says, grinning, before leading me to the restaurant for lava cakes, cocoa domes and the aptly named choco-falls (chocolate cascades over a sponge cake as you unwrap it). “You can farm cocoa all year, so it’s good for farmers, and it grows well alongside fruits or coffee.”
My tour of Thailand’s chocolate scene concludes at Skugga Estate, a farm in Mae On, a 30-minute drive from Chiang Mai’s city center. I whizz past the mountains of suburban Chiang Mai to the extremely tranquil property that also houses a bijou cafe and factory. Founder Anthony McDonald started growing coffee and tea here seven years ago and had some extra acres to fill, so he decided to grow cacao, too, reaping the first fruits of that crop two years ago. “These days,” he explains, “people are more open to trying things and appreciating things that are very well-made. We use very good ingredients, and our chocolate is very well-presented.”
To help stoke that adventurous spirit even further, McDonald has started staging wine and chocolate tasting nights in his Skugga cafes in downtown Chiang Mai, as well as offering regular chocolate bar workshops at the farm. “There’s a great appreciation for aesthetics, and chocolate lends itself to that,” he laughs. “Because chocolate looks sexy, tea doesn’t.”
