Launched in February 2024 at Azabudai Hills Garden Plaza in Tokyo, Japan, MATTE Bottega del Cioccolato quickly made a name for itself by producing the world’s thinnest chocolate. Aptly named “Corteccia” (“tree bark” in Italian), MATTE’s most famous dessert has been described as a wonder of engineering, as producing chocolate that is just 0.03 millimeters thick is no small feat.

Inspired by Italy’s classic layered chocolates, Corteccia consists of a single, ultra-thin layer of chocolate pressed and rolled using a unique custom machine developed over 1.5 years in collaboration with a local machinery specialist. Although you can probably find similar machines around the world, none of them can produce a layer of chocolate as thin as Corteccia.

You’re probably thinking, “Why does chocolate need to be this extremely thin, anyway?” Well, it turns out that the vision of MATTE founder Matteo Sanclicca was to create a chocolate dessert with an unprecedented melt-in-your-mouth texture. They say chocolate is at its best when it is about to melt in the mouth, and that is precisely the sensation MATTE set out to deliver with every bite of Corteccia.

By rolling the 0.03-millimeter layer of chocolate into a shape resembling a cylindrical twig covered in irregular tree bark, MATTE created a unique dessert that allegedly melts instantly upon contact with the tongue, delivering a novel mouthfeel.

Although many have tried to replicate Corteccia after the dessert went viral on social media, it has proven impossible to do so far, because the machine used to press the chocolate is essentially one-of-a-kind and only found in MATTE Bottega del Cioccolato’s Tokyo workshop.