“Retro shoes that evoke an Easter atmosphere all year round.” Those were adidas’s words of introduction for the ZX 10,000 Schokohase colorway. You can unpack these sneakers just like you would unpack a chocolate Easter bunny. And because we believe that the best chocolate looks as good as it tastes, we met KristyJan Chocolatiers, who created pralines tailored specifically to this silhouette.
As you look through the glass counter, you can admire a selection of pralines. Meanwhile, behind another pane of glass, married couple Kristýna and Jan prepare pralines, chocolate bars and other hand-made products of the highest quality. Their story could rival the famous book and movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – as you’re about to find out. Spoiler alert: you’re going to see so much literal eye candy that you won’t have any choice but to go to Prague’s Dejvice and see it for yourself.
How did the story of your chocolate factory begin?
It all started when we felt burned out in our jobs – in Jan’s case, the hospitality industry and in Kristýna’s case, working in all kinds of restaurants. We wanted to do something together for some time already, but we weren’t sure what.
Why chocolate?
The decision was made on our last holiday after a couple of beers, when we decided it would be something to do with chocolate – partly because Kristýna’s last job featured a lot of it. We’re inspired by our son Jenda, who inherited our weakness for chocolate and who we wanted to provide with higher quality, healthier products.
Every one of your chocolates has a unique design. Where do you find inspiration?
When coming up with the design, we always try to make the end result evoke the main ingredient. We paint our chocolate with cocoa butter, which kind of separates us from most of our competitors, and we mix our colors ourselves. After that, you have a million ways to decorate the chocolate. But evoking the main ingredient isn’t crucial, sometimes we just come up with a design and use it.
Which flavor is the most popular? And which one are you the most proud of?
It’s hard to say which one is our favorite. Before each praline goes for sale, we have to be 100% sure of the final taste and design. We already have almost 70 types of pralines now, and we believe that everyone can find their favorite one.
How do you combine the flavors?
Apart from more conservative flavors we also try to use more uncommon ones and come up with new, unconventional combinations. For example, barley with red orange, Savoy or the experiment with red cabbage, which we’re still fine-tuning – that’s really something to look forward to. Alcohol is a chapter on its own and we love using it in our chocolate, and, to be honest, so far we haven’t come across anyone else putting absinthe, Kontušovka, mezcal or Negroni into pralines.
How many pralines with 7 year old Havana rum would I have to eat to feel the liquor?
It can go both ways, lightly perfumed pralines as well as ones where we were really liberal with the alcohol – one of our regular customers ate about 12 pralines with absinthe and, as a result, got his driver’s licence suspended for half a year.
Do you agree that life is like a box of chocolates?
Definitely!
When we approached you with the project to accompany the adidas ZX 10,000 Schokohase sneakers, how did you proceed?
The sneakers themselves were naturally a source of inspiration, we noted even the smallest details. The result was a praline with the seam, one with an imitation of cut leather, one with a rabbit’s head, which is the main motive of the whole sneaker and last but not least, a praline with three stripes. The design of the cubistic chocolate bunny also came from the sneaker, to make the concept of the whole collection uniform.
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