We love cheese just as much as we adore chocolate but having it together, as a paired delicacy was a first for this writer. At the artisanal cheese and craft chocolate workshop conducted by Patricia Cosma, a bean-to-bar chocolate connoisseur and co-founder of the festival and Namrata Sundaresan, founder of Käse cheese, an artisan cheese brand from Chennai, we tried several unusual combinations. The fierce bitterness of dark chocolate, cut by the sharp saltiness of the cheese is intriguing. 

Cosma agrees—the chocolate and cheese pairing is not as common as pairing chocolate with alcohol (beer, wine and even whiskey) or wine with cheese. She has been doing these pairings for the last four years, “more like playing with the ingredients and seeing what comes out of it,” she tells mid-day.