More than just chocolate candies

The internationally renowned Salon du Chocolat exhibition has added the city of Milan as one more successful venue in its itinerary. Its second edition was held this past February, 34,000 visitors showing up to experience the cooking shows, tastings, meetings with famous pastry chefs and chocolatiers including Iginio Massari, Gualtiero Marchesi, Roberto Rinaldini, and Davide Oldani, and discovering the beautiful things that can be made with chocolate, like dresses and statues. Creating the latter was the Academy of Italian Pastry Masters (Ampi), which sponsored the exhibition organized by Digital Events and created by Event International.

In fact, the inaugural evening was accompanied by the “Chocolate Gallery,” a fashion show of chocolate apparel made by the masters of Ampi in partnership with 12 international designers, students of New Academy of Fine Arts (Naba) in Milan. Next on the catwalk were dresses of the French chocolatiers Patrice Chapon and Anita Thakker, a dress by Silvie Valtan, a designer from Cameroon, and finally a wedding dress conceived by Ernst Knam and designed by the haute couture designer Tony Ward.

The event was not only fashionable but it was also artistic. Knam himself created a chocolate statue inspired by Auguste Rodin’s “Kiss” which welcomed visitors at the entrance, and Davide Comaschi’s 1:1 scale reproduction of the Presenze designer chair based on a project by the Nucleo studio.

Eighty exhibitors from Italy and abroad presented many varieties of chocolate candies and cocoa-based sweets. Cameroon, Peru, Venezuela, and Togo were the countries chosen to present their product, the result of careful farming and perfect climate conditions. Compagnia del Cioccolato organized guided tours and awarded the 2017 Gold Bar Award to the Amedei, Slitti, and Domori companies.

Visitors also enjoyed gelato in chocolate and praline flavours. Antonio Morgese of the Rigoletto gelato shop had started at the Expo with “regional gelato,” with which he had highlighted some typical regional products, to offer chocolate flavours with different ingredients like bergamot, anise, caramel, and salt. Simone De Feo of Cremeria Capolinea studied eight aromatic varieties of fine Domori cocoa to develop a recipe capable of expressing the peculiarities of each variety with the exclusive use of 100% cocoa mass.

Also popular were the gelato flavours inspired by chocolate pralines, like the one with which Davide Comaschi won the World Chocolate Masters, redesigned to be offered in a tray alongside the Calbuiotto and Chocopralina Lime flavours. Or like the Pistachio Truffle from La Perla in Turin, which Filippo Novelli transformed into gelato and added to an elegant composition, “The Pistachio Garden.”

Editrade organized two events during the Salon du Chocolat. The first one was dedicated to Chocolate Gelato, with speakers Roberto Padrin, Mayor of Longarone, gelato city par excellence, Antonio Morgese, owner of the Rigoletto gelato parlour in Milan, and Caterina Verri, creative director of the communication agency that bears her name. The panelists discussed the strong growth of chocolate gelato and the increasing variety of flavours and combinations, from chocolate with Barolo to chocolate with thyme. The panel also took a look at how the product is communicated to the consumer using specific advertising campaigns where chocolate is offered to a wide and varied audience. The second event focused on the presentation of the new book Reverse Fusion by Pierpaolo and Riccardo Magni with Luciana Polliotti, a well-reviewed book that has been defined as a volume on gelato design, with the modern reworking of traditional gelato techniques.