On any given weekday night, Jael and Dan Rattigan’s home is as fragrant as a spice market. The scent of mughlai chicken and coconut rice waft out the windows of their post-war rambler house in the Sulphur Springs neighborhood of West Asheville.
As the founders of the French Broad Chocolates empire, Dan and Jael know how to strike a balance between new challenges and familiar comforts.
Their caramel-colored Chihuahua welcomes grateful dinner guests, followed quickly by their lively sons Sam and Max. The atmosphere is warm, welcoming, and distinctly casual. Jael brings out a collection of jewel-toned plates by local potter Lori Theriault and sets them on the counter. It’s a help-yourself kind of home.
The family gravitates toward the well-worn kitchen table, a remnant from the original French Broad Chocolate Lounge on Lexington Avenue. The lounge has found a newer, more polished home on Pack Square — an immensely popular, 4,000-square-foot destination, in fact, where eager tourists and locals line up out the door for the Rattigans’ truffles, caramels, artisan chocolate bars, chocolate drinks, and other richly crafted refreshments.
Dan and Jael’s products have been featured in more than 15 print magazines (including such heavy hitters as Food & Wine, Martha Stewart Living, Southern Living, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post) and on TV shows such as GMA Live! (of Good Morning America) and Unique Sweets on the Cooking Channel. French Broad Chocolates has received a national Good Food Award, two International Chocolate Awards, and won first place for “origin chocolate” at the renowned Northwest Chocolate Festival.
The couple’s appreciation for high quality shines bright at home, too, but is tempered by a relaxed simplicity. Carolina Home + Garden sat around the family table with them to find out how their home hits the sweet spot between cozy and vibrant.
Let’s start at the back of the house. I hear this room was the humble beginning of your chocolate business.
Jael: This was our chocolate studio when we first moved here. We had air conditioning in the window and a big heavy curtain across here and this is where we tempered chocolate and made truffles, running back and forth from our kitchen stove.
Can you paint a picture of what those early days were like?
Jael: So we move here and I’m pregnant, and we would make ganache in the other room. We had Sam who was one-and-a-half, so he’s toddling around, and Max is growing bigger and bigger in my belly, and I’m standing, dipping chocolate eight hours a day. … [Later], we’d scoop the ganache after the kids went to bed. It was hilarious. It was how we thought we wanted to set up our business — a little sweet home business.
French Broad Chocolates has grown tremendously since then. Do you get to spend much time here at home?
Jael: The kids keep us honest with our work life. If it weren’t for them, we would probably work all the time. Because we have to pick them up from school and want to spend evenings and weekends with them, we work less traditional entrepreneurial hours. We usually cook breakfast and dinner with our kids.
What’s a typical breakfast for your family?
Dan: I make Jael an egg, and whatever I’m putting away right now will become part of breakfast. So, chicken and salad, or I’ll make a soup if I have some stock.
Jael: Breakfast is just another opportunity for dinner in our house. Sam is a savory breakfast eater, but he’s also into classic, traditionalist eggs and toast. Max is all about chocolate toast, chocolate oatmeal, chocolate granola — chocolate being the common thread. He’s made of chocolate.
You have a great kitchen. Is there a story behind these cabinets?
Jael: Yes. Dan doesn’t really prioritize gift giving as a habit, but when he does give a gift he nails it and it’s usually something that he has made himself without my knowledge at all. So these cabinets were under the Christmas tree. He designed and made them by hand out of old pallet wood that our cacao came on.
The cabinets go really well with the beams of your house. Were those here when you bought it?
Dan: Our predecessors — there were two families here before us — the first family extended the second bedroom back and added on that sitting room back there. They sold the house to a guy that flipped it to us, but before he flipped it he raised the ceilings in here to match the back. We added more walls in after the fact because it was totally wide open.
Jael: My dad is a carpenter so he came and helped us add the second bathroom and close the kitchen off from the bedroom.
It’s clear that you spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Are there appliances or gadgets you can’t live without?
Jael: I think that a scale is something that we use every day, even starting with our morning coffee. It’s so easy to make things well if you’re precise. With Indian food like we’re having tonight, you can riff, but for baking and coffee you need it.
Dan: Knives, blender, Microplane [a type of zester/grater] — I like my Microplane.
You have quite a jam collection.
Jael: I go through binges and so I didn’t actually make any jam this summer because I was so overstocked from last summer. So last year we made wild blueberry jam, a cherry and Tulsi [a type of Indian basil] jam, and peach preserves.
Dan: I made a small batch of blackberry with the blackberries we picked down the street.
Tell me about the seasonal truffle program you have going at French Broad Chocolates.
Jael: The collection is based on foods that grow in a particular season or that are nostalgic food memories associated with a particular season. For the holidays, we did a fruitcake truffle. A traditional preparation of fruitcake in England involves a layer of marzipan, so we made a truffle with dark-chocolate ganache made with dried fruits and toasted almonds and a layer of marzipan.
Are you thinking about Valentine’s Day?
Jael: Oh, yes. We’ve been doing an aphrodisiac collection, including a “canela picante” truffle with flavors of cinnamon, dark chocolate, and a buildup of cayenne heat.
If your house was a chocolate, what would it be?
Jael: Wow. That is definitely not a question I’ve ever been asked. It’s comforting; it’s humble. I’m going to go with peanut-butter cup. Everybody likes a peanut-butter cup, just like they like our house. It’s not anything grand, but everybody feels comfortable here. The kitchen is the center.