Big Island Candies :: Travel & Leisure :: MOLI View

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Big Island Candies

By Cathay Che/MOLI

It's a beautiful day in the chocolate-covered neighborhood

A strange thing happened to an old, sprawling wooden plantation house a few doors down and across the street from my parents' place on the Big Island of Hawaii. I used to walk by this house every day on my way to catch the school bus during my last miserable year of junior high school, and except for its size and the overgrown yard, it was pretty innocuous. But 20 years later, things have changed on my parents' street, which is zoned for both residential and commercial use: The old, sprawling house is now an economical-looking, Japanese-owned factory with a parking lot where tour buses stop several times daily.

Weirdly, no one is upset by this as it's a happy place: of all things, an almost Willy Wonka-cute chocolate factory called Big Island Candies. And it's become successful beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

I get it. The first time I had an individually wrapped, diagonally striped, milk-chocolate-dipped, macadamia-nut, shortbread cookie (the signature item), I was amazed at how impossibly delicious it was. Somehow, the sum of this magical flavor pill far exceeded its parts. I soon branched out to the dark-chocolate-dipped, coffee, shortbread cookie and the caramel, chocolate-dipped, chocolate-chip shortbread cookie. Then came the truffles, biscotti, and brownies.

Big Island started a high-end line called Bien Vivente of olive-oil cookies infused with lavender, ginger, and sesame. Then there were some freaky confectionery items, ranging from chocolate crunchie squares filled with crushed potato chips to chocolate-dipped dried squid. I tried it all.

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