Monica Passin paints with oil on canvas, she teaches guitar lessons around New York City, she sings old-school honky-tonk with her band Li'l Mo and the Monicats, she raises money for the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and she owns Painter Girl Chocolates (produced in Brooklyn, sold on the web). She also has the best Betty Boop laugh ever. At three o'clock last Sunday, I met Li'l Mo and her sweetheart, Eddie (a chocolate novice who's known Monica since grade school in Riverdale), at the back entrance to the New York Chocolate Show. By four, we'd had a sultry good time and discovered every secret in chocolate business. Emily: I'm here at the Chocolate Show with Monica Passin of... More

The allure of the Chocolate Show is that you get to look the chocolatiers in the eye and have them place holy morsels on your tongue. You get the candymakers' unlimited attention—that is, until the chocolate wonks swoop in. The chocolate wonks are very serious people. They're working the show, but they have no official status. They're like politicians on the campaign trail, taking meetings in hallways and while waiting in line. They have chocolate bars to sell, chocolate investment deals to negotiate, research on chocolate fermentation to carry out, and chocolate articles to write. Listen, and you'll hear them.... More

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.... More