Salon du Chocolat

I’m back from Salon du Chocolat and now I can includes some pics and a few more details. Salon du Chocolat is a chocolate exhibition with lots of chocolate makers showing off their products. It’s at the Zurich Messe hall in Oerlikon, very easy to access with public transportation. It only runs this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 30 March – 1 April 2012. Cost: 15CHF for adults, 8CHF kids 6-12, under 6 free. You can leave and re-enter with a handstamp. We went at 10am Friday and later about 2pm that day. It was full but not super crowded. I’d plan on staying about an hour or so. There were so many interesting and pretty chocolates to try. It was super fun and you should definitely go.

What to see

Every booth is selling chocolate, but most booths have free samples to try and were especially friendly to my kids. We ate so much chocolate that my kids actually didn’t want any more. That’s saying something. The Cailler booth gives out a whole box of chocolate (shown above) and has you take a “chocolate personality” test, answering questions about the chocolate in the box. Awesome!

Sculptures

There are lots of beautiful chocolate sculptures to admire, particularly on the easter egg theme. My 8 year old was fascinated by this enormous chocolate egg at Sprüngli and stood there watching the guy decorate it for a good 30 minutes.

This guy carves chocolate sculptures, which generates an enormous pile of chocolate shavings. It’s fun to watch but my kids mostly liked it because they could eat as much chocolate shavings as they wanted. The carver is super nice and friendly to kids and is constantly handing out big handfuls of chocolate shavings to anyone that looks his way.

There are bunch of chocolate dresses that were in a fashion show on opening night of the exhibition. My boys were confused and curious about how chocolate could be made into clothes.

There is a “History of Chocolate” area (in Deutsch only) with a giant eclair and cream puff to climb on. It doesn’t look that fun but my kids thought it was great. Maybe it was all the chocolate coursing through their veins.

There are cooking demonstrations every hour and afterward, they give everyone some to try (we had profiteroles with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce – super yum!). If you show up at the end of the demo, you can get the treat even if you didn’t watch the demo (my kids only sat for about 5 mins before escaping to find more chocolate samples to eat).

“Chocoland” is basically a babysitting service for kids aged 4 to 10 (sorry no pic). They advertised it as a “chocolate workshop” but from what I could see, the only activity is the kids drawing their own packaging for a chocolate bar, which they get to take home. They will take your kids for an hour or so while you walk around the exhibition. But my kids were not interested in that and preferred to stay with me.

Let me end with a warning: be prepared for the sugar high and sugar low. My kids are still on the sugar high and are totally cuckoo, practically speaking in tongues and doing all sorts of crazy stuff. I’m just hoping I can get them to bed before the sugar crash hits. Good luck to you all. Now I’m going to lay on the couch and succumb to my own chocolate coma…