Le Salon du Chocolat Paris – Celebrating Cocoa + Edible Fashion !

If your rallying cry is Vive le Chocolat then we have the perfect Paris event for you. The Salon du Chocolat is the world's largest exhibition dedicated to the planet's favorite food. Here's where chocolatiers, pastry chefs, cocoa producers, and culinary journalists gather to share their passion with chocolate lovers from around the globe.

We Love Paris (Chocolate) in the Autumn

Salon du Chocolat takes place in the fall at the Paris Expo center out at Porte de Versailles. The event features demonstrations from top pâtissiers, a chocolate fashion show (you read that right), chocolate sculptures, and choco-laden workshops for children and grownups. Of course, there is plenty of nibbling, melting, savoring, and sampling all things chocolate.

The exhibition is organized around the French public holiday on November 1 (All Saints Day) and attracts more than 100,000 visitors during a five-day festival. Imagine — 250 booths offering a neverending array of mouthwatering chocolates, confections, and sweets. Our advice, though, is don't try to taste at all of them!

The Pastry Competition

Le Mondial des Arts Sucrés is an annual pastry competition, taking place at the salon, in which professionals and keen amateur bakers compete for the Trophée International de la Pâtisserie, a coveted international pastry award. Every year the competition has a theme; we particularly adored a recent annual theme that centered around the buche, the traditional French Noel log.

After the competition, head to the Pastry Show stage where renowned pâtissiers make and share their best chocolate recipes. You'll see expert pastry chefs from Le Bristol, Hotel Lutetia, Prince de Galles and other top Paris restaurants & hotels sharing their secrets for refined and elegant chocolate concoctions.

In France, being a pâtissier or pâtissière is an esteemed and respected career. Pastry chefs require years of formal training and education to get their degree. In prestigious kitchens, a pastry chef will manage a brigade of pâtissiers: a boulanger for making breads, cakes and pastries; a confiseur for candies and petits fours; a décorateur to finish the cakes and show pieces; and a glacier for cold and frozen desserts.

Salon du Chocolate Fashion Show

This is the fashion show you've been waiting for all your life, and one of the signature events of Salon du Chocolat Paris. For three decades chocolatiers and couturiers have collaborated to create fashions that combine fashion and chocolate. The fantasy couture outfits inspired by chocolate are paraded on the runway to a packed audience on the Gala Evening. Ever thought about wearing an edible-cupcake adorned hoop skirt?

The Art of Chocolate

Each year a new theme is chosen for the salon. One year featured choco-sculptures of Napoleon. Chocolate artist Jean-Luc Decluzeau presented a bas-relief inspired by Jacques-Louis David's painting Bonaparte Franchissant le Grand Saint-Bernard. (Bonaparte Crossing the Great Saint-Bernard Pass.) He made a life-size drawing before molding the sculpture into a mammoth block of chocolate. Made with more than 220 pounds of chocolate, the ode to Napoleon measured in at 165 cm wide and 106 cm tall (5'5" by 3'6".) Decluzeau spent 120 hours creating his chocolate masterpiece.

The World Chocolate Masters Competition

In the Masters Competition twenty chefs and chocolate makers from around the globe vie for the title of Maître Chocolatier. Each participant gets to the finals by qualifying in demanding preliminary heats. The score of chocolatiers compete in six categories including chocolate sculpture and confection with a jury of international chocolatiers and pâtissiers serving as judges. We've volunteered our judging services, but we're still waiting for a call-back!

Salon du Chocolat Resources

• Paris Expo, Pavilion 4
• Porte de Versailles
• 15th Arrondissement
• Information…