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The multi-concept place comprises a dining area and an educational bean-to-bar space where guests can learn more about how chocolate is made
Take a walk around Great World and you may notice local pastry chef Janice Wong and her diners chopping up cocoa fruit at her new chocolate-focused space, Pure Imagination. Here, Wong and her team demystify the bean-to-bar process, bringing their guests on an educational and sensorial journey to create their own sweets.
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Located in the middle of Great World, Pure Imagination is designed in a style similar to an alfresco cafe, with its sweet treats delicately displayed at the entrance—diners are able to choose between dining at a private table or at the bar. Its factory, positioned next to the chocolatier, is decked in large windows, offering a full live view of the chocolate-making process.
While Pure Imagination offers Janice's signature treats, including chocolate bonbons and cakes, its bean-to-bar experience is the one to look out for.
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The immersive two-hour experience starts off with a humble bean—a cacao pod, to be exact. Learn more about the fruit as you touch and cut into it, revealing its beans. Try a seed or two and get a sense of its creamy mangosteen-like pulp. From here, learn more about its fermentation process, transforming the raw beans into the cocoa bean we know and love. This process is essential to help the flavour development of cacao beans, creating bold and rich flavours.
This fermentation process includes extracting the pulp into boxes or baskets and set to ferment for six to 10 days. During this time, the beans turn purple, then red as the fermentation process completes. As the beans ferment, their alcohol changes acetic or lactic acid, bringing out the full flavour of the cacao beans.
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Next, get to visit Pure Imagination's chocolate-making factory, where you can have a behind-the-scenes look at the chocolate-making process—from roasting the seeds to grinding the nibs into “cocoa liquor” (pure cocoa mass). Watch as the cocoa gets roasted and winnowed (removing the outer shell of the cocoa bean) to transform the cocoa bean into nibs. Then, move along the factory and witness these cocoa particles broken down into fine chocolate during its grinding and conching process.
Get a chance to visit the garden, where you will find four of the 1,000 cocoa trees which Janice and her team hope to plant across the island, including Gardens by the Bay and Spectra Secondary School, as an initiative to create Singapore’s first homegrown bean-to-bar chocolate.
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Before the experience comes to an end, you will get to indulge in a platter of chocolate-themed delicacies, exploring the three fundamental flavours of chocolate—sweetness, acidity and bitterness. Its platter includes cascara tea, cacao nibs and vanilla ice cream, chocolate cake and rich hot chocolate. Indulge in these treats, tasting each unique chocolate element. Our favourite was the hot chocolate, featuring thick and dark chocolate with a rich and creamy texture and a dark, fruity aroma.
While Singapore may not get its own chocolate origin for the next year or two, Pure Imagination takes its guests on a highly immersive and educational journey, giving insight into creating chocolate from bean to bar.
Pure Imagination | 1 Kim Seng Promenade, B1-119 Great World City, S(237994)
