Three stars from the Michelin guide, a casual gourmet kitchen in the heart of Dubai, and now a retail chocolate collection that carries a traveller's eye from the cobbled streets of southern Sicily to the elegant cafés of Piedmont. Heinz Beck, the chef whose name has become synonymous with refined Italian dining, has turned his attention to cacao, and the result is a small, deliberate range that tells the story of a country through one of its most beloved ingredients.
The collection is more than a set of bonbons or a chocolate bar line-up. It is a quiet journey mapped onto the Italian peninsula, beginning in Modica, a baroque hilltop town in the Province of Ragusa, where chocolate has been made in the same slow, almost stubborn way since the eighteenth century. From there the route climbs north, through the hazelnut groves of the Langhe and into Turin, the capital of Piedmont and the spiritual home of Italian chocolate craftsmanship.
For Australian readers, the timing feels right. The appetite for premium European chocolate has grown steadily in Sydney and Melbourne, where Italian dessert culture already carries serious weight thanks to decades of migration, neighbourhood pasticcerie, and the country's much-loved café habit. This new range gives chocolate lovers an accessible way to bring a slice of Italian craft home, even if a long-haul flight is the only other route.
Modica is a town that lives in the wrong century on purpose, or at least it likes to pretend to. Its stone alleyways tumble towards baroque churches that have known gold leaf since long before Napoleon got anywhere near the south of Italy. Chocolate arrived here in the 1700s, brought through Spanish aristocrats with links to New Spain, and the recipe has barely moved since.
The signature is a cold-worked paste. Unlike modern industrial chocolate, which is conched for hours to smooth out flavour and texture, Modica's chocolate is ground at low temperatures over a stone surface. The result keeps its crystalline sugar crunch, a sugary bite that connoisseurs either adore or need to learn to adore. The flavour is unusually direct: bright, almost spicy, with deep earthy notes from the cacao.
Heinz Beck's collection begins here, with bars that honour the Modican craft. The texture is unmistakable, and the percentages of cacao vary from something gentle enough for an after-dinner sweet to a darker block that the Italians might serve with a small glass of Marsala or a sharp passito.
If Modica is where Italian chocolate remembers its roots, Turin is where it showed off. The capital of Piedmont became a chocolate capital in the early nineteenth century, when Caffarel began blending local hazelnuts with cacao to stretch the raw material during the Napoleonic trade blockades. The result was gianduja, a velvety, sweet, slightly bitter paste that became Piedmont's signature and one of Italy's most recognisable edible exports.
The Langhe hills around Turin produce some of the best hazelnuts in the world, particularly the Tonda Gentile variety, which gives gianduja its characteristic roundness and perfume. Modern chocolate houses from Venchi to Peyrano continue to perfect the art, and Beck's new Turin-inspired line draws on that same heritage without copying any one of its precedents.
In the collection, the Piedmontese spirit appears in spreads and filled bars where hazelnut takes the lead. They are richer, smoother, and sweeter than the Modica originals, the kind of chocolate that pairs naturally with a strong espresso or a small glass of Barolo Chinato after a long Sunday lunch.
The retail range opens with a handful of products, each tied to a different point on the Italian map. The Modica bars appear first, sourced from slow-working producers in the south and paired with carefully chosen origins of cacao. There are bars at 70 and 80 percent, plus a milk version for those who prefer their chocolate on the creamier side of life.
The Turin-led range moves into spreads and pralines. A classic gianduja in a small glass jar is the centrepiece, with hazelnut paste at a high percentage and very little sugar added. Single-portion chocolates arrive in sleek boxes, shaped like little jewels, with fillings that swing between dark ganache and the softer world of hazelnut, almond, or pistachio cream.
Pistachio earns its own paragraph, because in Dubai and across much of the Gulf it travels very well. The Bronte pistachio from the slopes of Mount Etna, in Sicily, has become a luxury ingredient across the Emirates, and the collection uses it in a chocolate-coated version that Italian expats and pistachio devotees will recognise immediately. Prices reflect the sourcing; these are not pantry items, but presents.
Australian coffee drinkers have a reputation for taking espresso seriously, and the same instinct helps when tasting this range. Begin with the lightest Modica bar, take a small piece, let it melt against the roof of the mouth, and notice how the crystalline sugar gives way to the deeper cacao. Move on to a darker variant, sip water between pieces, and finish with a small cup of espresso or a glass of cold milk.
The gianduja spreads invite a different ritual. Spread a thin layer on warm toasted pane, or simply enjoy a small spoon on its own. Pairs beautifully with a cheeky glass of Moscato d'Asti for those long arvo sessions on the balcony, the kind of lazy afternoon where chocolate does the heavy lifting.
For the pistachio pieces, treat them like petits fours. One or two at a time, alongside a green or Earl Grey tea, and you have an end to a meal that no restaurant dessert plate can quite match.
What makes the collection different from a generic online shelf is the setting. Taste of Italy by Heinz Beck is built as an authentic Italian deli, the kind of place where you might pop in for a quick panino at lunchtime and leave with a bag of biscuits and a wedge of pecorino. The chocolates sit naturally in that environment, displayed alongside the pastries, breads, and gelato that already come from the kitchen of a Michelin-credentialed chef.
The Dubai address makes sense for a project of this calibre. The city has become one of the great crossroads of Italian food outside Italy, with a population that knows its pancetta from its guanciale and a casual dining scene that can carry serious quality without losing the warmth of a neighbourhood deli. Travellers from Brisbane, Adelaide, or Perth touching down on long-haul stopovers will find it an easy detour.
Chocolate travels better than most luxury foods. Properly wrapped, in the kind of boxes this collection ships in, it survives the trip from Dubai to Sydney without losing its gloss. The retail line is designed to be gift-friendly, with options at several price points, from a simple Modica bar slipped into a handbag to a fully decked-out box for a milestone birthday or a wedding anniversary.
Australians have a long history with comforting baked goods and edible gifts. The tradition of meeting a friend at the airport with a small hamper, or popping a thank-you box on a colleague's desk, has roots that go back to the country's broader food culture (and yes, the same instinct has built quite the reputation for classic Australian pies). A tin of Modica bars or a jar of gianduja slips into that custom with ease, especially during the cooler months when a little European luxury arrives as a welcome escape from grey skies.
The new retail collection invites a slower kind of holiday memory-making. Buy a piece of Modica in Dubai, taste it on the plane, and you carry a flavour of southern Sicily across the equator. Buy a jar of gianduja, and the hazelnut groves of Piedmont come along for the ride. Few gifts do that so elegantly, and few are so easy to share with someone waiting at home.
Order online for delivery across the UAE, or stop by the deli counter to see the range in person. Browse the full chocolate selection, along with the breads, pastries, and gelato that sit beside it, through the Taste of Italy website, where gift vouchers and seasonal offers also live.