When it came to dessert, Marcel Desaulniers and his Death by Chocolate were larger than life

Marcel Desaulniers, renowned chef and co-owner of the former Trellis restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, died recently at age 78. He was born in Woonsocket and was a true innovator.

Nancy Verde Barr wrote an article about the chef for The Journal in 1993. He had just won the James Beard Foundation award for best chef in the Mid-Atlantic. She said it was his infatuation with chocolate, revealed in his award-winning cookbook, “Death by Chocolate: The Last Word on a Consuming Passion,” that made him, if not a celebrity, at least a superstar among chocolate lovers.

When he began serving this dessert in 1982, he attracted diners from far and wide to come to the restaurant.

His passion for chocolate developed in Rhode Island. Here’s what Barr wrote.

“Growing up in Woonsocket, Desaulniers was one of six children raised by a mother whose youngest child was born a day before her husband died. Desaulniers remembers that the meals were modest, “but when it was a special event, my mother was there with chocolate. She would come home from work and make chocolate cookies, caramels, cakes and fudge late at night. Knowing what she put into these creations made my sisters and I feel incredible. »

“The fudge his mother later sent him when he was a rifleman in Vietnam was a warm reminder of that childhood feeling.

“At 14, Desaulniers was washing dishes at the Bocce Club, in Woonsocket, and at 18, he worked several jobs at the Tower Restaurant, in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. When the cooks didn’t show up, he filled in in a kitchen open, where he could see the reaction of the guests: “I was not good at sport, at Mont Saint-Charles, so it was the first time that I became aware of the pleasures that I could create.

“The owner of the restaurant, sensing the young cook’s pleasure, took him to New York in the spring of 1963 to visit the Culinary Institute of America. “I had never seen chefs in whites and hats, nor smelled roast lamb or simmering broth – I knew straight away that I wanted to become a chef.

“And so, that fall, Desaulniers enrolled in culinary school.

“He then worked in New York and, as a partner in a successful food brokerage business, traveled across the country, where he observed the growing pride in American cuisine. In 1980, he opened Trellis , and the restaurant’s reputation for killer desserts was born almost instantly with the Death by Chocolate cake: seven layers – 10 pounds, 2 ounces – of brownie, meringue, chocolate and mocha mousses, ganache and mocha-rum sauce. …only 1,354 calories per serving.

After 29 years, Desaulniers and his partner sold the restaurant in 2009. But not before winning numerous honors at the restaurant and for his cookbooks, including being named to Food & Wine magazine’s Chef Honor Roll in 1983 and in Who’s Who of Cooking in Cook’s magazine. America in 1984. He also served on the board of directors of the CIA.

Journal Food editor Donna Lee has written about her cookbooks but has never shared the Death by Chocolate recipe in print.

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For what? The six-page recipe lists 40 ingredients. She described it as “a masterpiece of chocolate meringue, chocolate mousse, mocha mousse, ganache and brownie.”

“I don’t think many people will attempt Death by Chocolate,” he told Donna. “But so many people ask me for the recipe that I had to include it.”

The portion served at the restaurant weighed one pound.

He must have been a very fun man to be around.

This article originally appeared in The Providence Journal: RI native Marcel Desaulniers remembers his dessert innovation.