Modica, Sicily
Sicily's oldest chocolate maker. The same street since 1880; the same cold method since cacao first crossed the ocean.
When the Spanish brought cacao back from Mesoamerica in the sixteenth century, they brought the Aztec tools with it: the metate, a curved stone warmed by a brazier beneath, on which the beans were ground by hand with a stone roller. Europe added sugar, and for three hundred years this was simply how chocolate was made.
Then the Industrial Revolution arrived, with conching and tempering, and the old method disappeared almost everywhere.
Modica had been a county tied closely to the Spanish crown, and here — through an improbable chain of historical accident and stubborn habit — chocolate went on being worked cold.
By 1992 only three artisans in Modica still made it this way, and one of them was the Bonajuto family.
1820
Francesco Ignazio Bonajuto, son of a notary, trades in snow from the Iblean hills and opens a spice shop, an ice-cream parlour and a fattojo del ciccolatte: a chocolate workshop that controls the whole chain, from cacao bean to finished bar.
1854
His son Federico inherits "the chocolate workshop with all its tools" and drops the riskier trades to concentrate on chocolate and ice cream.
1880
Francesco Bonajuto, Don Ciccio, founds the firm F. Bonajuto on Corso Umberto I, turning the old shop into a pastry laboratory and an elegant café that becomes the meeting place of the town. In 1911 it wins the gold medal at the International Exhibition in Rome.
1932
On Francesco's death his widow Carmela Di Martino takes the helm, with Carmelo Ruta, Don Ciccio's most trusted collaborator. The Bonajuto and Ruta families become one; the methods do not change.
1992
Franco Ruta and his son Pierpaolo begin the recovery of the old Iblean recipes and of cold-processed chocolate, then on the verge of extinction. Franco called it a "small crazy dream".
2008
Eurispes lists the Antica Dolceria Bonajuto among the 100 Excellences of Italy.
Same street. Same method. Still open.
Warm enough to pour. Well below the point where sugar melts.
You can hear the sugar.
01
Six generations in the same street, beside the stairway that climbs into Cartellone, the old quarter carved into the rock. The shop still keeps its vetrina dei ricordi, a cabinet of family documents, and a tasting corner where every chocolate can be tried before it is bought. Memory, they say, is one of the ingredients.
02
Modica is a UNESCO World Heritage town of Baroque churches climbing a gorge in south-eastern Sicily, and it is the only place in Europe where the pre-industrial way of making chocolate never died. Bonajuto's chocolate is not a revival: it is the unbroken thread.
03
Cacao mass and sugar, worked cold. The result is a bar that is dark, coarse and intensely aromatic, with the sugar still audible between the teeth — flavoured, when it is flavoured, with vanilla, cinnamon or the ingredients of the Iblean countryside.
04
Bonajuto is also a house of filologia gastronomica: the historical recovery of recipes the rest of Sicily has lost. The mpanatigghi, a Spanish-descended biscuit that hides beef inside chocolate, cinnamon and almonds. The aranciata of orange peel candied in honey. Colours in the gelato di campagna from spinach, beetroot and saffron rather than dyes. When they innovate — with chefs, musicians, fashion houses — they do it knowing exactly where they come from.
Guarantee of origin
Every Bonajuto bar is produced in the family laboratory in Modica, in small daily batches. The ingredient list of a classic bar is two lines long: cacao mass and sugar, plus the natural flavouring. Nothing is added to make it smoother, glossier or longer-lasting.
42 °C
Cacao mass and sugar are worked at around 42–45 °C, well below the temperature at which sugar melts. No conching, no tempering, no cocoa butter added, no milk, no lecithin.
150 years
More than a hundred and fifty years in the same street, six generations deep.
Through ZAGARA Selection
Bonajuto chocolate does not travel well through supermarket logistics, and it was never meant to: it is a fresh product, made every week, without the additives that keep industrial chocolate stable for years. Through ZAGARA Selection it reaches Australia by the shortest route from Modica — small consignments, carefully temperature-managed — so the bar you open here is the bar you would buy on Corso Umberto I.
Three historic recipes, five flavoured bars, and two things beyond the bar.
Every Bonajuto bar is between consignments from Modica right now. Leave your email on the one you want and we will write to you the day it lands in Australia.
© Antica Dolceria Bonajuto — photographs courtesy of the house; Modica views by Ciccio Erre
