Our Chocolatier Sweets

The Journey to Becoming a Chocolatierand pâtissier

Long before he became a chocolatier, a young Musabbir Chowdhury discovered art in an unlikely place: a cadet college in Bangladesh. With no fancy brushes, he learned to spray paint using a toothbrush and a mesh net for event backdrops and stage decorations. What began as a practical skill soon became a passion, leading him to oil painting on canvas. After graduating, he held a weeklong solo exhibition at the Soviet Cultural Centre in Dhaka, showcasing 52 oil paintings. The Soviet Ambassador was so impressed that he offered Musabbir a scholarship to study in the USSR. In Kiev, Ukraine, he earned a Bachelor's and Master's in Aeronautical Engineering from the National University of Aviation. But his hunger for learning didn't stop there. Over 15 years, he studied across 15 institutions in Europe and North America, including the Ivey Business School, Stanford University, the University of Cambridge, and INSEAD. He earned two master's degrees, two postgraduate certificates, and a doctorate, gaining expertise in engineering, information systems, multimedia, animation, educational technology, and business. For 25 years, he served at five colleges across Manitoba, Alberta, and Ontario, rising to the role of Dean of Business and Information Technology. He held deanships at Fleming College and Loyalist College in Toronto. At Niagara College, he founded the Productivity and Innovation Lab (PiLab), where his research focused on productivity and happiness. It was there he first recognized that chocolate can make people happy—a small insight that would later change his life. After retiring from academia, he went back to school once more. He crossed the Atlantic to France's top culinary institute, the École Nationale Supérieure de Pâtisserie (ENSP), also known as École Ducasse. There, among young pastry chefs, the former dean learned the art of French pâtisserie. Returning to Ontario, he co-founded Eliya Chocolates. The engineer in him optimized production; the artist in him sculpted bonbons; the researcher from PiLab finally had his answer: chocolate was a tool for happiness. He trained at École Callebaut and École Valrhona, gardened his own edible flowers, and—as a marathon runner—developed healthy confectionaries for endurance athletes. As a wine connoisseur, he crafted chocolates to pair with high-end wines, using local, fresh ingredients to make food that tastes good and looks beautiful. Today, Dr. Musabbir Chowdhury is many things: ex-cadet, artist, engineer, professor, dean, marathon runner, French pâtissier, and chocolatier. But perhaps the simplest way to describe him is this: a Bangladeshi-born Canadian who once painted with a toothbrush on a cadet college wall and now creates edible art that pairs with vintage Bordeaux. He never stopped being an artist. He just changed his medium—from oil on canvas to chocolate in bloom.