Not your average sweet treat: 15ft chocolate tree takes tasty shape in Parisian boutique
Paris, it is probably fair to say, is well known for its culinary grandeur. A long weekend in the French capital will bring you into contact with all manner of superb restaurants, inviting brasseries, fine wines and tempting gourmet treats. And that’s just for lunch.
But even the average Parisian will probably raise a chic eyebrow at the fantastical creation that has taken shape in the window of an upmarket boutique – a colossal chocolate tree which comes complete with a team of resident monkeys.
This 16ft (five metre) creation is the work of expert chocolatier Patrick Roger – and is currently the star attraction at his flagship store on the central Place de la Madeleine.
An astonishingly ornate piece of confection, with layered leaves, tapering roots and hanging branches, the sculpture has been made using five tonnes of chocolate.
It has also been constructed without recourse to structural support – meaning the entire thing is as fragile as you would expect an artwork built from sugar and cocoa to be.
‘It’s very risky,’ Roger explains. ‘Yesterday, for example, we carried a monkey [into position] and it crumbled completely. It was completely pulverised.’
The sculpture has been attracting the attention of pre-Christmas shoppers, with pedestrians pausing outside the shop – which sits just north of the Place de la Concorde and the Rue de Rivoli, one of Paris’s most important shopping avenues.
There is, however, a serious ecological point to Roger’s work – which is designed to draw attention to the plight of African wildlife, at threat from human encroachment.
‘If tomorrow I manage to save two monkeys, I can maybe save 250 acres (100 hectares),’ he explains.
‘There's a large part of my work that depends on vegetation. So it's really this image that's very important to me.’
Younger visitors to Roger’s shop may be more fascinated by the news that the chocolate is real and entirely edible – although the sculpture will live on long after its use-by date.
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