Chocolate Show Update: The Old Guard
We Americans used to believe that all chocolate came from France (or possibly from Belgium or Switzerland). Now we know that it comes from asymmetrical pod-laden trees that grow in the jungles of Côte D'Ivoire, New Guinea, Brazil, Venezuela, the Caribbean, and Central America. But the French are still in charge of the Chocolate Show.
Francophone couple Sylvie Douce and François Jeantet founded the show in Paris in 1995 (they got 40,000 visitors on the first try), and they brought the event to New York ten years ago. At this weekend's New York Chocolate Show, France's chocolate artisans offer some healthy competition to their American counterparts.
French chocolatiers and pastry chefs define themselves by their macarons. Mad Mac's secret is using white chocolate in the fillings, giving the Old World sandwich cookies the creaminess of the traditional buttercream-filled versions while extending their shelf life. According to the Parisian-born owners, Ludovic Augendre and Florian Bellanger, "we are the only ones on the market that produce this quality of macaron and can ship nationwide without any breakage." Serious Eats' macaron specialist Robyn Lee explains that "Mad Mac's packaging works because every macaron has its own protective bubble" (above).
Augendre and Bellanger are content with their online sales, but New York's hyperbolically Parisian Trois Crepes Patisserie (which has a booth at the show) stocks the macs alongside cherries in kirsch and bon bons made by monks from Mont Saint Michel.
Across the aisle from Trois Crepes is Comptoir de Cacao, a French family chocolate business (à la Michel Cluizel), which doesn't yet sell to this country but can't be too far from getting a stateside distributor for its rustic wooden boxes of pistachio pralines and chocolate palets stacked into cases like roulette chips (right).
With a spanking new Manhattan shop, the reigning Frenchman at the show is Jacques Torres, who spent the opening morning of the event pushing a dolly through the aisles, yelling "chooocolate, chocolate, chocolate," like a country market vendor. By his own estimation, Torres is on top of the competition from the Old World. "It's a hard time for the French right now because of the exchange rate," he said. The French chocolate companies price their confections in the soaring euro. Torres sells in dollars—lots of them.
About the author: Emily Stone, proprietor of Chocolate in Context, is a chocolate enthusiast, itinerant traveler, and a lover of literature who lives in Pittsburgh. She's been a movie reviewer, a reproductive health researcher, and an independent bookstore owner. Her writing has appeared in the magazines Budget Travel, Travel + Leisure, and Time Out New York, as well as on the websites World Hum and Epicurious.
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1 Comment:
I ate lots of their samples from Comptoir de Cacao. ;) I hope they distribute in the US soon.
Kathy YL Chan at 7:22PM on 11/10/07