Chef Johan Halsberghe (35) already knew that his chocolate mousse was popular with Americans when he opened the very first chocolate mousse bar in the US in New York on 8 February. But it came as a bit of a surprise that it would be such an overwhelming success. Last weekend, MOJO – short for ‘Mousse by Johan’ – already took first place in TimeOut Magazine’s list of ‘101 Things to do in New York City’, resulting in a real surprise.
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Halsberghe ended up in New York ten years ago as private chef for the Belgian ambassador to the United Nations. He inherited his love for patisserie from his grandfather and his chocolate mousse immediately became a fixture on the menu of official lunches and dinners. The creamy dessert became so popular that guests even contacted it in advance and specifically asked for it.
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Meanwhile, the chef runs his own catering company, with the European UN ambassador as his main customer, but the smashing success of his Belgian chocolate mousse made it clear that there is a separate market for it. Halsberghe and his Brazilian wife Jaqueline set up a small chocolate mousse factory in East Harlem, a neighborhood in Manhattan.
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No concessions
He didn’t have to make any concessions to American taste: Americans immediately liked the chocolate mousse. “During research, we found that Americans didn’t really know what mousse was: they always compared it to pudding or ice cream. Now we are three years later and we see that people are better informed and that they finally know what mousse is. Their flavors have also improved. It used to be big, bigger, biggest, but if it’s small and high-quality, then they go for it now, even if they pay the same price as for something bigger.”
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Coronavirus puts pressure on jar stock
The three MOJO Desserts Factory mousses – dark chocolate, white chocolate and hazelnut – are on the shelves of several stores in New York and by the end of the year, Halsberghe hopes MOJO will be found in about 150 to 200 stores in New York. the entire northeastern United States. That is currently not counting the corona virus: the plastic jars in which the chocolate mousse is distributed are, after all, stuck in China. The chef is now looking for a local solution.
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Foam Bar
Three weeks ago, Halsberghe opened the MOJO Artisanal Mousse Bar, where he sells chocolate mousse like in an ice cream bar: per scoop and with toppings, because the Americans love it. In addition to the three traditional mousses, innovative flavors are also being launched in the bar, such as a ruby passion fruit mousse and a matcha mousse. In this way, Halsberghe can also check which flavors are good on the market and then find their way to the store shelves. Customers can ‘mix and match’ their flavors and have a choice of toppings from fresh fruit and white, dark, ruby of salted caramel crispies.
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Fun fact: customers who really want to feel like they are in seventh heaven can also enjoy their jar of MOJO with a golden spoon. Rice pudding is simply passé, Belgian chocolate mousse is the new ‘it’.
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(Read more below the photo.)
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Culiair ambassador
Halsberghe wants to introduce the Belgian culinary heritage even more to the US. “I still feel Belgian and not Flemish,” he says. “Belgium is a chocolate country: I love beer, I love the good living, there are few countries in the world where you can eat as well as in Belgium. My goal is to be an ambassador in the US to bring those good Belgian products here. Who knows, we will not only make chocolate mousse in the coming years, but also other things.”
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