I’m at Raaka looking for Nate because we’ve had some back and forth about buying some cocoa powder — organic, non-alkali, 10-12% fat, non-dutched. I can’t walk into just any store looking for this stuff, and I figure I’ve hit a home run when I find this place because otherwise I’m ordering cocoa from Massachusetts with a hefty shipping charge attached. Problem is, Nate is out ‘sick’, and nobody else knows his job or anything else about selling me some cocoa powder.

I keep going back but leaving empty-handed, so I make the best of it by riding a CitiBike around Red Hook where I find a distillery instead of the other chocolate factory that was supposed to be there.

Plus, I find myself riding all over Brooklyn including the length of Court Street from Red Hook through Park Slope north into Brooklyn Heights where I can buy an ice-cold apple cider to quench a thirst developed over that slightly uphill ride.

Back at Raaka, people who have signed up for the factory tour are sampling the various concoctions including pieces of their line of chocolate bars which include lemon coconut cream, maple and nibs, pink sea salt, oat milk, bourbon cask aged and even a 100% cacao free of cane sugar, their normal sweetener. No corn syrup here.

Their substitute for cane sugar is either maple sugar or yacón — both organic.

All unique flavors of single origin, unroasted but still fermented chocolate.