Is cacao the golden ticket for São Tomé and Príncipe? Chocolatier Claudio Corallo has put this African island nation on the culinary map
São Tomé and Príncipe looks like this yet manages to be one of the least-visited countries on the planet. Photo: Scott Ramsay.By Mark Ellwood /
December 11, 2024
Claudio Corallo sits on a stool in his kitchen in downtown São Tomé, talking animatedly about his favorite subject: chocolate. Like a kid who literally lives next door to the chocolate factory — his own, installed in two repurposed shipping containers — the spry septuagenarian can’t help his excitement, switching between his native Italian and English while preparing a pasta lunch. He reaches into the fridge with a flourish, a jar of dark, pesto-like sauce in hand; “fatto a casa,” he says proudly — homemade. He’s cooked it up himself not from basil and pine nuts, but from cacao.
Among chocolate experts, the mere mention of Corallo will prompt reveries. His creamy yet barely sweet bars have none of the bitter kick of high cacao chocolate. Like a real-life Willy Wonka, he’s a restless innovator and tinkerer, constantly trying new recipes that waste little of the cacao fruit — distilling and boiling it all down, seeds and pulp included. He isn’t experimenting to disrupt the market, but to satisfy a passionate curiosity about the crop he’s made his life’s work. And while his bars are stocked at prestigious shops like London’s Fortnum & Mason (though you can also order directly from him), Corallo is hardly a household name.
Why? Because he’s out there.
Corallo’s adopted home is São Tomé and Príncipe, a tropical two-island nation in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa. Distance from the equator: 69 miles. Population: 231,000. It has the curious honor of being one of the least-visited countries on the planet, welcoming only around 35,000 tourists in its record year, 2019, before plummeting to just 15,000 in 2021, the most recent for which there are data points. Most of those entering were business travelers out of Ghana or Portugal (the two places offering direct flights). São Tomé is the larger island, with the main town and the vast majority of the population; the smaller Príncipe is like a country cousin, still covered in jungle and with just a few thousand inhabitants.
Those who do visit will find it shocking that São Tomé and Príncipe remains so overlooked, given the islands’ abundant natural beauty, UNESCO-protected biosphere, pristine tropical rainforests, and a remarkable assortment of indigenous wildlife. But tourism has long been an afterthought here. Air connections are spotty, and the islands’ tourist infrastructure has been mostly ad hoc: old colonial buildings turned into small B&Bs, perhaps with a restaurant attached. But newer, higher-end options are slowly emerging. In Príncipe, a former backpacker-style hotel on the beach has just been reimagined as a sustainability-minded retreat called Bom Bom, which opened in September.
São Tomé and Príncipe’s story continues to unfold, as a few key players hope to change the dynamic around the crop that’s been the constant between the country’s past and present. It begins, like so many good stories, with a bean.
Stop and smell the orange hibiscus in the garden at Roça Sundy. Photo: Graydon Herriott.
A boogie boarder at a beach near Santo António, Príncipe. Photo: Graydon Herriott.
Breakfast spread at Roça Sundy. Photo: Graydon Herriott.São Tomé and Príncipe bubbled up from the oceans millennia ago, and remained without permanent inhabitants until Portuguese colonists spotted the potential in the lush volcanic land for farming — particularly the new miracle food: cacao. King João VI first brought the cacao crop here in the 1820s. He wanted to offset the uncertainty of plantations in what’s now Brazil; cacao was a key income source for his realm, but the rumblings of independence there made it a risky rather than a reliable source. (“You have a lot of cacao” is Portuguese slang for money, a hint of how important that crop had become.) Thick forests on specklike Príncipe, the smaller of the two islands at just 50 square miles, were ideal for cacao, a shade-loving crop. The Portuguese established plantations and imported slaves to work them; ruins of these roças still dot the islands, many of their buildings still half-occupied by locals as ad hoc villages.
Those who run small farms today produce the key crop for the local economy, accounting for 80 percent of the country’s exports. It was the crop that first drew Florence-born Corallo here: He had moved to Africa in 1974, after studying tropical cultivation back home in Italy, arriving in what was then Zaire to work as a coffee broker. He vacationed in São Tomé and Príncipe once or twice; its tropical beaches were known to those living in the continent’s southwest. Corallo only resolved to move to the islands as the political instability in the region spiked in the mid 1990s. “I came here to keep my family safe,” he says with a shrug. Corallo quickly became intrigued by chocolate, and wondered if he could deploy his decades-long expertise and degree on a different crop than coffee.
“I started trying all the chocolate and it was too bitter — a difetto, a defect,” he says, standing at one of the workbenches in his shop. “The problem was the preparation, because there was a lack of attention.” He grabs a penknife and slices open a cacao bean, shelling it deftly. Claudio then jimmies out a rootlike sliver, resembling the bitter pith in a banana. It’s so hard that when he presses it onto the wooden table, it leaves a slight imprint. “That’s bitter, like radicchio, and when chocolate’s produced industrially, it doesn’t get removed. But we remove it by hand, and it makes a big difference. We clean the cacao properly, which makes it soft and gentle, so dolce like caramel.” He offers classes for visitors to show them how to prep the beans properly, giving them a chance to make their own personal chocolate.
Certainly, the bars he makes with these filleted beans are outstanding, strong without bitterness, even at 100 percent cacao; there are slabs and shards and morsels, some flavored with candied ginger. There are farms still on São Tomé, the larger island where the colonial administration was based and Corallo himself lives, a short drive north along the waterfront from the center of town. His beans, though, come almost exclusively from Príncipe. Yet those small farms, and the jungles with which they coexist, were earmarked for destruction barely 20 years ago — until wealthy South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth stepped in. He hopes that the extraordinary bioscape here, coupled with the islands’ existing reputation for chocolate, could create a new template for low-impact, high-end tourism.
Why does chocolate often taste sharp? Because of a bitter inner core that Corallo’s team removes by hand, gently shelling and preparing the beans. Photo: Rui Camilo/laif/Redux. 
Beautiful Praia Grande (a.k.a. the Big Beach) is where turtles come to nest. Photo: Maique Madeira.
The finished product: a creamy yet barely sweet bar of Corallo chocolate. Photo: Alex Masi.
São Tomé and Príncipe is “a hidden gem, an ecotourism haven,” says Naledi Khabo of the Africa Tourism Association. Photo: Scott Ramsay.There’s certainly potential for that, according to Naledi Khabo of the Africa Tourism Association, who calls the country “a hidden gem, an ecotourism haven,” even though it’s not currently an active member of her organization. She notes that the issues around connectivity and limited flights make it a pricey destination to reach, but unlocking access should be done in lockstep with conservation. “Sustainable infrastructure development that doesn’t harm the ecosystem is key; so is balancing tourism growth while preserving [the country’s] unique biodiversity and cultural heritage — and engaging local communities, too.”
Shuttleworth agrees — and could be the man to help in exactly the ways that Khabo prefers. He is the anti–Elon Musk: Instead of preaching procreation, he and his wife have resolved to stay childless for the sake of the planet, and he doesn’t use the fortune he earned via tech start-ups (the padlock on a URL, signifying security, was Shuttleworth’s innovation) on trifles. Rather, Shuttleworth spends much of it to shore up São Tomé and Príncipe and prime it to succeed in the future. Príncipe is now a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, with more endemic species per square mile than anywhere on earth. Butterflies, in particular, are so plentiful, they flutter like confetti through the air when the undergrowth is disturbed.
But when Shuttleworth touched down — a pit stop between homes in the Isle of Man and South Africa — he learned that these Edenic surroundings were soon to be denuded. The dense tropical forests would be stripped away, and palm oil plantations would take their place; cacao would be elbowed aside for a much more lucrative, industrialized contemporary crop. Horrified, Shuttleworth resolved to try to find an alternative solution, investing in the country via his holding firm HBD (or Here Be Dragons, the notation for terra incognita on old maps). It now operates several hotels, including Bom Bom, eco-lodge Sundy Praia, and luxurious Roça Sundy, which repurposes a main home of one of those abandoned, colonial-era plantations; a chocolate factory is on the same site.
Cacao is grown throughout HBD’s 2,700-acre property: Walking through the undergrowth, the pendulous fruits dangle heavily from the vinelike plants. Big, fat beans are better, as there’s more cocoa butter within, explains Filipa Pereira, who works as a nature guide here. “Cacao has more varieties than grapes, and it absorbs all the flavors around it,” she says. “Banana trees nearby will give it a banana-like flavor.” Vast trays of nibs lie out to dry in the sunshine back near the farmhouse; a digital thermometer monitors the temperature, stuck to a wooden post. The nibs will be processed not only into chocolate, but into other products under the Paciencia brand of organic goods: The pulp around the seeds becomes vinegar, and the shells can be used for a tealike infusion. Most of the workers are locals, though there’s an occasional outsider, like Pereira or a Portuguese expat trained as an osteopath who came to volunteer — and ended up joining the factory full time.
There’s one cacao product championed by Corallo that the HBD team has not yet opted to produce. One of the chocolate bars incorporates booze-soaked raisins — he cooks up that alcohol from cacao pulp. It’s a tricky process, Corallo warns, as it can easily spoil, the smell resembling acetone rather than grappa. In the bars, it adds a spiky punch, but the quality’s more evident sipped neat. He offers a snifter of it after lunch, sitting in his kitchen; the liqueur has a heady, cherry aftertaste. There’s no export license available, though, for this unique liqueur, Corallo says conspiratorially. It’s only available as a reward to those who make the pilgrimage to his hard-to-reach home. 
Praia Grande, one of the best beaches on Príncipe, is also a turtle-nesting hot spot, especially for leatherbacks and green turtles. Come for nesting season December through January, or hatching season between February and May. For the rest of the year, expect the beach to be alive with crabs, scattering with a scuttle at approaching footsteps; just make sure to wear long sleeves and pants to keep mosquitoes at bay.
Take a boat out into the waters off the coast of Príncipe, the easiest way to see hard-to-reach beaches; snorkel in the sea in the Baía das Agulhas, or Bay of Spires, and head into the jungle on foot to explore the biosphere. Don’t be startled, though, to notice the occasional brick, or bridge, relics of the roças that nature has now subsumed.
The origin of Angolar culture on São Tomé is mysterious and wreathed in folklore: Purportedly, the tiny fishing community on the southeast coast, which speaks a dialect distinct from what the rest of the locals use, is descended from shipwrecked Angolan slaves in the 1540s. The truth is likely more complex, but sitting to watch the fishermen ready their boats for the day is a hypnotic experience. Pop into the namesake hotel in Roça São João dos Angolares for lunch. It’s run by local celebrity chef João Carlos Silva who cooks every dish on a wood-fired oven (try the feijoada with banana rice).
British-born, New York–based Mark Ellwood has lived out of a suitcase for most of his life. He is Editor-at-Large for luxury bible Robb Report, a columnist for Bloomberg Luxury, and the creator and cohost of Bloomberg’s Travel Genius podcast. Mark is also an ongoing contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, and the New York Times, and the author of Bargain Fever: How to Shop in a Discounted World.
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