Raised in Honolulu, now sharing a desk in Seattle with three cats and decorating with chocolate bar boxes.

I’m finishing up a master’s in gastronomy, focusing most on cacao agriculture and the chocolate industry. I’m particularly interested in the development of Hawaii’s chocolate community and obsessed with shifts in chocolate branding and packaging.

Within and outside chocolate, you’ll find me studying history, cultural context, and trends in both food and thought. I’ve written about the history of Seattle’s chocolate industry and argued Costco’s chocolate chip cookie defines our era, and you might run into me leading history tours of Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market.

This website is a growing repository of some of my writings, published and unpublished, academic and not.

Robin Klevansky 7/20/25 Robin Klevansky 7/20/25

Sweet Innovations, Bitter Markets, and a Rich Recovery: A Bite-Sized History of Seattle’s Chocolate Industry

Long-form article on Seattle’s chocolate history, published in the Winter 2024 issue of COLUMBIA – The Magazine of Northwest History.

Robin Klevansky 5/14/24 Robin Klevansky 5/14/24

Costco’s Massive Chocolate Chip Cookie Is the Food That Defines Our Era

A tasty trend article written for a project.

Robin Klevansky 3/17/24 Robin Klevansky 3/17/24

Salted Red Ginger and the Latchkey Walk Home

A personal essay.

Robin Klevansky 3/16/24 Robin Klevansky 3/16/24

Review: Conversations with Food

This book review was published in the journal Food, Culture, and Society.

Robin Klevansky 3/14/24 Robin Klevansky 3/14/24

Coffee Maple Any-Milk Panna Cotta

Playing around in the style of Food & Wine.

Robin Klevansky 3/13/24 Robin Klevansky 3/13/24

The Eternal Café

For the intrepid, 4500 words on digital ambience videos. A sort of trend analysis, arguing the videos offer an immersive balm to the overwhelm viewers experience by existing in today’s world.