Tempesto
Story
SINCE 2021
Discover the essence of Tempesto
From one Chef's Obsession
to a new standard in
Couverture Chocolate
If you’ve worked with real chocolate in South Africa, chances are you’ve crossed paths with Fabio’s influence — the guy who chased the good stuff long before it was easy to find. This is the man behind the movement, the storm that started it, and the direction he’s pushing the industry toward.
Tempesto started as one chef’s pursuit of better chocolate — the kind he tasted abroad and couldn’t forget. That pursuit became a mission, and the mission became a company dedicated to giving chefs in South Africa access to the world’s finest couverture and rarest ingredients.
Tempesto began long before the business ever existed — in a small kitchen where Sundays were loud, emotional, and always centred around food. Fabio grew up between a Neapolitan father with an ironclad palate and a French-Belgian mother who cooked Italian classics while whistling her way through the day. In that kitchen, meals weren’t just meals — they were arguments, reconciliations, rituals, and love letters. He didn’t stand a chance. Food was the only language that ever made sense.
He spent years chasing the craft — from Cape Town to New York to London — absorbing the grit of cheffing, the burn marks, the impossible standards, the strange cocktail of ego and heart that makes chefs both unshakeable and breakable. He learned early: the kitchen is both church and battlefield. And respect is earned, not claimed.
Chocolate became his medium because of what it can do — how it shifts under your fingers, how it carries its own logic, how it rewards both discipline and creativity. Taste compound and you’ll recognise sugar, fat, shortcuts. Taste couverture and you understand why chocolate is a craft: the clean snap, the aroma, the depth, the flavour that keeps unfolding long after the bite. One is product; the other is an ingredient with a passport.
Tempesto was built to source the best of that — the real deal, the kind chefs talk about quietly, almost protectively. Fabio wanted South African chefs to have the same access he had seen abroad: not just to good chocolate, but to the right chocolate for the right purpose. Because chocolate, like chefs, has personality.
And here’s the truth: Fabio still gets a thrill when he speaks to someone who really knows the difference — when the conversation changes, the guard drops, and two people meet in the same language of precision and passion. That’s where Tempesto lives.
Today, Tempesto is more than chocolate distribution. It’s concierge-style sourcing for kitchens that don’t have time for red tape, delays, or excuses. Fabio gets chefs what they need, when they need it, because he’s felt that pressure himself — the clock, the heat, the expectations.
This is Tempesto: built from storm energy, shaped by kitchens, driven by respect, and dedicated to bringing chefs ingredients worthy of the craft.