Jacques Torres

When Jacques Torres, a.k.a. Mr. Chocolate, opened his first retail store in Dumbo, Brooklyn, in 2000, it was just the beginning of his love affair with New York City. Since then, Torres, 59, a pioneer in the bean-to-bar movement, has opened six other retail shops and, in 2013, moved production to a 40,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Torres wears many hats: cookbook author, creator of New York City’s first chocolate museum, James Beard-award winning pastry chef, and lead judge on Nailed It, a baking competition show on Netflix. He hails from Bandol, a small town in France’s Provence, where, at 15, he began his career as an apprentice in a pastry shop. Three years later, he began working for a Michelin-rated chef in Nice and, at 26, became the youngest pastry chef to win the prestigious Meilleur Ouvrier de France medal in Pastry.