The “Salon du Chocolat” goes around worldwide with famous fairs in New York, Tokyo, Beijing, even Moscow, and next week shows in Paris with a 4 day fair, from October 29th till November 2nd. A one-way cacao Valhalla, the ultimate theme park, or eventual deception… I’m haven’t really got a clear view about what to expect from the 2008 “Salon du Chocolat“.
It is hard to imagine entering the halls in Portes de Versailles, that has more than of 12.000m² to offer for chocoholics, cacaophiles, and aficionados. I only know I’m going one day out of four, for the first time, and the plan is to discover more about artisan & origin chocolate explorations. With a vast range of all known top chocolatiers and artisan brands present at the fair, there sure must be lots of fun to share with other people.
The Paris team for the Salon conducted an amusing survey together with Le Figaro/Madame, on the French and their chocolate habits. Some fun facts:
- Men and women, everyone prefers dark chocolate (50%), followed by milk chocolate (35%) and white chocolate (15%).
- Solitaire or social? 24% of men do not share their munches … against 22% of women. Shared with family, between lovers, then friends, chocolate however still remains primarily a pleasure that is offered to and experienced together.
- 41% of women believe that eating chocolate gives them more pleasure than making love …
- In buying habits, respondents like to buy their chocolate in priority from small but high quality artisan chocolatiers (48%) and in a much lesser extent from big industrial brands (23%).
I’ve been spotting the 400+ participants list, which includes some 140 chocolatiers, and I’m glad to see a whole range of favourites in place: Domori, Lindt, La Maison du Chocolat, Maison Bonnat, Michel Cluizel, NewTree, Phillipe Pascoët, Pralus and the Belgian new Zaabär too.
Some others to discover are: Nestlé, De Bondt and Cacao Barry (from Meulan). I’ll also seek after bars from Dagoba, and USA brands like De Vries, Scharffen Berger, Guittard, and maybe TCHO, although none of these are listed with a stand. Big misses are Amedei, Valrhona and German brands like Coppeneur.
I’ll keep you posted with writings later on!
Any other brands you think of are worth checking out?
