“I want to add another dimension to cinema” - Nadia Williams on pairing chocolates with film
The former bank manager has been a chocolatier for almost 20 years, and is currently pairing chocolates with film in collaboration with the Hippodrome in Bo'ness. She spoke to Rosalind Erskine about the process and how she’s never lost her joy for chocolate.
Like a lot of people, Nadia Williams found herself catching up with friends virtually during Covid and it was during this time that she took her day job of making chocolates for her Thinking Chocolate business, and found a new niche - pairing chocolates with films.
While the pairing aspect wasn’t new, Nadia has worked with the Scotch Malt Whisky Society on whisky and chocolate; Rose Murray Brown with wine and chocolate and Stewart Brewing on beer and chocolate, to name a few, pairing films and chocolate was not something she’d explored but it was two of her passions in life.
“I have friends across the country and, during Covid, instead of starting a (virtual) book club we came up with the idea of doing a film club and so we’d pick a film each week and watch it; maybe chat with each other during it or talk about it afterwards. Nothing too prescriptive, it was something fun to do. We started to wonder what we’d have during the films and it was while watching The Great Gatsby we decided we’d have cocktails and mocktails to go with the film,” she explained.
“Because I am a chocolatier I thought ‘why don’t I extend that and rather than just having nibbles and things why don’t I try and make some chocolates to go with the film?’ I started watching films with a different eye at that point because going to the cinema is a sensory experience with the video, audio and with 4D there’s piped in smells and interactive elements. I thought paired chocolates will add another dimension to cinema and films. It’s really fun for me and a big part of the interest for me with chocolate is doing the experimentation and recipe development and working with flavours.”
The leap from the small to big screen came when Nadia and her daughter attended HippFest, the annual film and live music festival at Bo’ness’s Hippodrome cinema held in March. There she met the founding director Alison Strauss and gave her a card and said she’d love to work together. The rest is history with Nadia’s Thinking Chocolate supplying specially created boxes of chocolates for screenings of films like Some Like it Hot; Little Shop of Horrors; When Harry Met Sally; Red Shoes and Groundhog Day. All with a box of six chocolates. “Six chocolates is probably around a good number for a film because you don’t want eating chocolates to overtake you watching the film,” she explained.
These taste along events, or edible cinema as Nadia calls them, have fallen into a pattern of being held around Valentine’s Day and Halloween but this year there are a couple more to add to the diary, given how popular they are. On September 12 there will be an anniversary showing of Amelie and on 30 December a taste along screening of The Holdovers.
Nadia’s process in how to pair chocolates with film is a long one: “I’ll end up watching the film five or six times,” she said. “Watching the films I know well to create a range of chocolates to go with it is a very different undertaking. I’m watching the film a lot, to make sure I’ve covered the best timings and flavours. I want to hail back to the wee matinee boxes, which had some chocolates and some sweets in them. They were just beautiful to look at, like little works of art. I wanted to emulate that in a way.”
She starts by taking notes on food references or colours that come up throughout the film, “Usually a typical film will yield about 25 of those,” she said. “Then I look at where they fall in the film because you don’t necessarily want to hit all the key scenes in the film you want to maybe work around them as opposed to coincide with them, so it doesn’t spoil people’s enjoyment of the film particularly if it’s the first time they’ve seen it.
“Then I look at how I can interpret those points. Something might be quite literal and others might be a bit more tenuous. You can either enhance the moment, contrast it or even mimic it. For example, in the film Some Like it Hot, there’s a scene very early on when everyone is being turfed out of a speakeasy and the guy has got his little cup and he says ‘I want another cup of coffee’. For that particular point in the film I had a chocolate that was in the shape of a cup and inside was a very intense espresso ganache.
“That’s a straightforward link but something a bit more tenuous, also in Some Like it Hot, when Marylin Monroe is sashaying down the platform and she famously has half an inch or an inch shaved off one heel or her shoe to give her that signature gait. For that chocolate, I combine the idea that Chanel No.5 was her favourite perfume, which has some rose notes, and this jiggle that she has and the fact that Jack Lemmon refers to her as ‘jello on springs’ so I created a Turkish delight as there’s that jelly texture with a rose flavour. It’s not something I take super seriously but you can have a lot of fun with it.”
Nadia’s journey into chocolate as a business started in 2008 when she was on maternity leave from her job as a bank manager in Edinburgh and attended a course held by John Slattery. But it stemmed from a lifelong interest in chocolate: “I’ve always been interested in chocolate since I was a kid, beyond just liking eating it. I’ve been to plantations, museums, all that sort of stuff. Anything to do with chocolate, or chocolate adjacent, I’ve always explored,” she said. “With chocolate I always said that the minute I stop being interested in it or it takes the joy away then I won’t do it anymore but we’re coming up for 19 years and it hasn’t happened.”
Find out more about the chocolate taste along film screening at the Bo’ness Hippodrome via their website.
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