Postcard from Wyoming - The Cowboy Chocolatier

Real cowboys eat chocolate…and at least one cowboy makes it too.  That’s the late breaking news from our Thelma and Louise road trip. 

Driving through Wyoming this past week, my intrepid travel companion, Connie Gibbons, and I have charted miles, hiked the Tetons, trout-fished the Snake River, gushed over Old Faithful, been up close and personal with moose, elk, bison and a young grizzly bear and experienced the newest wonder of the Wild West.  Chocolate.

Somewhere south of the lively rodeo town of Cody, we sped past a marker that read Meeteetse, population 347, when a storefront caught my eye and caused me to hit the brakes and throw the rental into reverse. And there we were, peering through the window of The Meeteetse Chocolatier.   The chocolate shop was the very picture of the old West and occupied a building that appeared to have housed a saloon where Matt Dillon and Miss Kitty may have held forth in a former life.  The rustic furnishings were an invitation to “sit a spell” and have a beverage or two topped off with a brownie or a few truffles and catch up on the local news.  The freestanding wood burning furnace, farm chairs and comfortable wagon-wheel motif couch are a reminder that we’re in the wilds of Wyoming.

In 2004, Tim Kellogg was a rodeo rider in need of a new bronc saddle.  His mom suggested he sell some of his chocolates and brownies at the Cody Stampede Rodeo, an annual 4^th of July celebration that brings thousands to the area.  He balked; she talked.  And she won.  Soon Tim had the new saddle as well as a thriving business.  Cowboy by day and chocolatier by night, he walks the barbwire fence line between two worlds, the rugged and refined.

During his student days studying business and environmental economics at the University of Colorado he worked on a small horse ranch and performed in rodeos.  After graduation, he had two goals on his mind.  One was to work on a big cattle ranch and the other to live somewhere he could pursue a professional rodeo career.  The job took him to a large ranch outside of Meeteetse, Wyoming that raised natural Angus beef.  And Meeteetse was conveniently located just 30 miles south of Cody, the “Rodeo Capital of the World.”

The work of a modern cowboy is physical and outdoors much like our cowboy heroes of television and movies.  Kellogg works the tough part of the cowboy myth, mending fences, moving cattle, irrigating alfalfa and oats for feed and maintaining the ranch.  By day his environment is expansive and physically demanding.  At night his work shrinks to a tiny kitchen and a fanatically precise art.

He learned to make truffles at the apron strings of his grandmother, Anna Hunchar. who lived back east.  Both grandmother and grandfather were remarkable cooks and enforced a “no one else in the kitchen” rule, the very same one he practices in his own business.   When his grandmother developed Parkinson’s Disease, Kellogg feared that her recipes and treats would disappear, so about ten years ago he began making holiday chocolates for the family.

As Kellogg tells it, the chocolates were amateur and not very good, although his family would disagree.  Making chocolate only once a year, he had little opportunity to refine his grandmother’s recipes or his skills and he worked in a home kitchen. That’s when his mother stepped in and suggested he sell his chocolates to help pay for the much-needed saddle. 

It wasn’t long before Kellogg gave up riding rodeo and started selling chocolates at rodeos instead.  Next came a store front and a professional kitchen where he could practice his craft.  

His chocolates and packaging sing Wyoming.  Truffle boxes are lined with red bandana patterned tissue paper and tied with baling twine .

While the packaging is all cowboys and culture, the truffles are all about the landscape.  Truffles with sage, huckleberry, jalapeno – even Coors beer - share the wood-framed case with the more traditional mocha, Champagne, raspberry and Grand Marnier.

Aside from a local ice cream, everything is made in-house and made by the cowboy chocolatier.  And everything is made from the best.  Consider, as an example, his hot chocolate drink.  Kellogg uses organic milk and melted chocolate to create something remarkable in this world of instant everything. Seasonal chocolates enhance the core assortment and customers clamor for the release of the Valentine, Easter and holiday chocolates.   He stubbornly refuses to “rush the season” and for the Meeteetse Chocolatier this means no holiday chocolates appear before the calendar permits.  You won’t find Easter candies right after Valentine’s Day and Christmas chocolates don’t appear in the case till the actual Christmas season – not the artificially contrived seasons of the modern retail world.

His shop is open every day except during January when it is closed altogether.  After the holidays, Kellogg rides off to a culinary school in London where he studies technique and has time to experiment.  “There no time to play in my chocolate kitchen,” he says, “I have to go away for that.”

His life is always about balance.  “When I’m tired of working with chocolate, I go work with cattle.”  “When I’m tired of cattle, I can retreat to my kitchen.”  “It’s the best of both worlds. I come home to my dog smelling of either manure or chocolate.”

Connie and I headed down the road with sage and huckleberry truffles melting in our mouths, a carefully packed box of chocolates nestled in the glove box and another Wyoming tale to tell.  As she tuned the radio to “Outlaw Country", our favorite XM road music, she mused, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could hear Willie sing ‘My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys’?”