Art in chocolate at the New York Chocolate Show

Confectionery has long been considered an art form, and that was apparent in several manifestations at the New York Chocolate Show, which ran from November 1-13 2011 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Manhattan.

If any American’s expectations in chocolate were still formed by what was available years ago at the candy store on the corner or by boxes of Whitman’s Samplers, then the Chocolate Show’s exhibitors would push those people though a time warp into the bright, imaginative and delectable present.

The show had a Broadway theme, which was reflected in a series of costumes featuring chocolate inspired by Broadway shows and designed by Broadway costume designers. One of the most spectacular was a mannequin dressed as "Chocolate Folly", inspired by “Follies”, by Tony Award-winning costume designer Gregg Barnes, and Pastry Chef Steve Evetts of the New York Marriott Marquis. Chocolate is used in the beads, feathers, and elaborate headdress.

Taking filled chocolates to a new, colorful and decorative level were the French chocolatier Christophe Roussel, with pouty red lips; the New Jersey company 2 Chicks with Chocolate and their Lead Chocolatier Stephanie Vazquez, with gorgeous colorfully-splattered filled confections. Their fillings include a new fig caramel, and they continue to develop new and unusual flavors.

A high spot of the show was the work of Håkan Mårtensson of FIKA Chokolad of New York. Mårtensson won a gold medal in the 2008 Culinary Olympics, and his current work includes not only gorgeous filled chocolates—one series is called The Seven Deadly Sins—but sculptures in chocolate. Mårtensson was showing the Star Wars character Yoda, a frightening clown head, a very spooky skull, and was working on a winged dragon throughout the event.

And if one needed a break from the serious art, there were also cast chocolate pieces by ChocoArt, which included the Holy Family and a donkey (cast in milk and white chocolate), a reclining Buddha, and Barack Obama cast, oddly, I thought, in white chocolate.

The Chocolate Show and Salon du Chocolate takes place worldwide, in New York, Paris, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Madrid, Zurich, Bahia, Cairo, Moscow, Shanghai, Tokyo and other cities in Japan.