Trade show dedicated to all things chocolate opens in Paris

Link : http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041028/323/f5iks.html


Miss France 2004 Leatitia Bleger presents a creation entirely made of chocolate for the inauguration of the 2004 Salon du Chocolat in Paris

PARIS (AFP) - A trade show exhibiting chocolate in all its forms opened to the public in Paris, packed with vendors from around the world and crowds looking to take their sweet-tooth addiction to new heights.

Among the stalls featuring everything from commercial candy bars to purveyors of the very finest of the brown stuff were also some unusual exhibits, including an Australian artist painting in Belgian white chocolate, a Paris florist whose bouquets are edible and a four-metre (13-foot) high Eiffel Tower made of chocolate.

At the event's inauguration late Wednesday, models dressed in sweet creations took to the catwalk before a VIP audience.

The Salon du Chocolat -- co-sponsored by Ivory Coast, supplier of 40 percent of the world's cocoa -- runs to Monday.

It is the 10th year the show has taken place in Paris, and in a sign of its ever-increasing popularity it has set up in a vast trade centre in the city's south, abandoning its usual chic venue next to the Louvre museum.

Off-shoots of the trade show have also started in New York and Tokyo, and organisers said another was about to begin in Beijing.