Velt: The Roman Chocolate Dream World of Livia Tommasino

Posted by Rowena Dumlao Rowena Dumlao - Giardina 2/05/2022

Velt: The Roman Chocolate Dream World of Livia Tommasino

Where there's chocolate, there's happiness. This proves true at the artisan chocolate shop that recently opened last December in Rome. Velt is located in the Marconi district of the capital and behind this is an all-female structure owned by the twenty-two year old maître chocolatier Livia Tommasino. With her life entirely focused on chocolate-making, Livia has programmed her studies towards her dream of becoming a maitre chocolatier by taking her superior studies at the Vincenzo Gioberti Istituto Professionale per i Servizi per Enogastronomia ed Ospitalità Alberghiera in Rome, then attending a more specified course on pastries. Soon after, she enrolled at Cast Alimenti in Brescia, a prestigious cutting-edge school of higher education and specialization in the art of food disciplines. Her first step in applying her knowledge was at an internship at Zuccarello Chocolate and Pastry Shop in Turin.

Velt is the chocolate dream world created by Livia that emits a beautiful heady sweet edible scent. Its therapeutic smell really brings forth happiness, as chocolates promise. It is an activity focused entirely on chocolate worked with the heart and dedicated to her family, the name of which is dedicated to her parents: an acronym of Vito and Emilia plus her initials. It is a tailor-made and cutting-edge laboratory equipped with a thermoforming machine which uses a hot plastic molding technique, and a 3D printer to give three-dimensionality to the subjects, bringing chocolate into a new dimension. For Livia, a continuous research on innovation and advanced technology is vital in her project of chocolate making.

At Velt, you will find a wide array of products that are focused on the use of chocolates as the protagonistic raw ingredient. White, milk dark from 50% to 90% blends and single origins, with the specific brands of Valrhona and Dimori. A small laboratory of chocolates and cakes, the whole production line is created by hand and with utmost attention. There are a variety of classic desserts and more innovative one presented in the forms of biscuits, chocolate liqueur, chocolate covered citrus peels, spreads of gianduia and pistachios, dragèes with nut centers, ginger and the olives, cakes, tartlets, and pralines. The protagonists in the glass counter are the pralines of different shapes and flavors: coconut and dark chocolate, banana and passion fruit, salted caramel, coffee and sambuca, chocolate liqueur, honey, raspberry, sour cherry and lime, pistachio cremino, peanuts, hazelnuts and vanilla.

In view of further growth in the future, Livia has the idea of creating synergies between chocolate and food, a sort of joint venture with chefs where chocolate will be combined the food which stresses the versatility of this ingredient and the infinite variations in can attain in taste, color and texture. For her, chocolate seems to be the answer to everything and this is the smell she dreams of breathing every day. Perhaps one day she can make her first trip to distant cocoa plantations with the aim of one day arriving at a bean to bar production thus avoiding the use of transformed cocoa mass.