The first thing I noticed about Gianluca Franzoni when I introduced myself to him just minutes before a tasting of Domori Cacao Culture at Gallery Illy in London was his suit.

There are artisan silk weavers in Lucca who dream of threading a fine scarf with the polish and delicacy of that blue pinstripe. There are custom glovemakers in Florence who fantasize about fitting your hands as flawlessly as those jacket and trousers traced Franzoni’s slender frame. And there is perhaps only one chocolate maker in Turin who’d dare to produce Napolitains, as individually wrapped squares of chocolate are known, as smooth as that fabric  – would you mind showing us the label, Gianluca? – cut and stitched by the Naples sartoria Salvatore Fusco.

That Turinese chocolate maker? None other than Franzoni.  The Naples-smooth Napolitians? From Domori, the company he founded in 1994 to produce chocolate from plantation to plant, Venezuela to Italy. No intermediaries. With his cocoa beans as with his suits Franzoni refuses to buy from middle men.

Franzoni and co-presenter Stefano Giubertoni, the Domori CEO, made it clear their house style of fine chocolate was very much about smoothness only without smootheners. There were no milky or nutty chocolates in the tasting, though Turin is famous for chocolate hazelnut gianduia as well as gianduiotti, nor was cocoa powder or cocoa butter amongst the ingredients. The Napolitains consisting only of cocoa mass (pure chocolate liquor) made from Criollo, the finest variety of cocoa bean, and sugar.

By starting with Criollo beans Franzone gets a creamy chocolate of maximum flavour and low astringency without a bitter or tannic edge. His concept of a smooth dark chocolate is one that doesn’t make you pucker as if to prove to its worth – or your sophistication. If anyone had guessed that one of his Napolitains had a cocoa mass content of 60 percent rather than the 70 percent listed on the labels he would’ve been thrilled. As the chocolate industry forces cocoa inflation, pushing higher and higher percentage dark chocolates as if 82% bars were automatically superior to 78% ones Domori was instead stressing flavour profiles and in its single origin chocolates.

Domori’s Teyuna chocolate, from Colombia, with its notes of cashew and honey, was already familar to me, though I didn’t know it. It’s the chocolate of choice at the extraordinary Grom Gelato. Based in Turin, Grom now has gelaterias throughout Italy as well as in Paris, New York and Tokyo but not yet, sadly, London. If any Londoner wanted to know what they’d been missing I had an answer of which I am sure Franzoni would approve: No Neapolitan tailor could make you a suit as smooth as Grom’s Domori Teyuna cioccolato extranoir.

In an LA Times article about Ferran Adrià’s plans to open a pizzeria in Barcelona, the elBulli chef is shown sampling a pizza margherita at Turin ‘s Frattelli La Cozza [corso Regio Parco 39, tel: +39 011859900 map.] That pizzeria may take its name from brothers Carlo and Guilio Fratelli, but its claim to fame is Aldo Brandi, the sole living pizzaiolo directly descended from Raffaele Esposito Brandi. According to legend, Raffaele created the tricolored pizza – basil green, mozzarella white, tomato red – to honor Margherita, first queen of the united Italy. The Buster Keaton-like photo is of Aldo Brandi, though I’m not sure if he’s in the frame, holding the frame or both.