Vicuna Chocolate in Peterborough has a new chocolatier making all the delicious sweet treats the region’s chocolate lovers have come to enjoy.
Lydia Studier-Tarzia started two weeks ago at the downtown Peterborough shop owned by Pierre Fabre and quickly hit the ground running with the holidays approaching.
During her time as a fine art student at Santa Fe University of Art and Design in New Mexico, Studier-Tarzia first realized the relationship between food and art. She felt a disconnect with those viewing her work and she wanted to dig deeper. For one project, she decided to put together an installation involving food that would evoke memories.
“That was my first foray into food and art together,” she said.
She landed a job at a chocolate shop in Santa Fe and “everything just clicked,” Studier-Tarzia said.
“I finally found what I was looking for,” she said, remembering that feeling of making her first truffle. She took a class in Las Vegas with famed chocolatier Melissa Coppel and later worked for Coco Jolie in New Jersey.
“I’ve got some eclectic experience,” Studier-Tarzia said.
Then she decided to move to New Hampshire and was in search of a new home to pursue her passion. She made a list of chocolate businesses in the Granite State and one day decided to take a drive and see what was really out there. Her stop at Vicuna proved to be the right one.
“I was just going in to check out the business,” she said. “I hadn’t visited yet, so I decided to stop in.”
She started talking with Fabre and the connection was clear. They had a couple meetings and it led to her start a couple weeks ago. Since taking over the chocolate making, Studier-Tarzia said she has made more than 700 pieces, including introducing a holiday collection of truffles and barks, using festive flavors like gingerbread, peppermint and cranberry.
Studier-Tarzia has some ideas of how to expand and improve the Vicuna brand, but knows how fortunate she is to have an “already wonderful product with a story to it.”
“We want to give people the things they love, while bringing a freshness to the brand,” she said.
She loves the connection that chocolate creates and those little moments of joy that people experience with it. As a chocolate lover herself – dark milk chocolate is her favorite – Studier-Tarzia is ready for the challenge of helping Vicuna expand its product line, which gives her the chance to enhance her creativity.
“This is really what I enjoy doing,” she said. “I want to do what I do and do it well.”
Vicuna Chocolate is open Thursday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.