This January we got to attend an extremely yummy expo at the Coex hall~ Salon Du Chocolat!!

♥ Yes, an expo for JUST chocolate! ♥

If you live in Seoul you can attend lots of fun weekend expos over at the Coex hall, Nara and I often hit up some of the better ones for Modern Design, Crafts, and other fun goodies~ but this was the first one about something we could actually eat! Sign me up! Sign me up!

Salon Du Chocolat is an international traveling expo that has been running for about 18 years, but this was the very first year they came to Seoul. Salon Du Chocolat ran from January 17th -20th and tickets cost 15,000 won to get in a person~ a bit more expensive vs the usual expos here.

Thankfully Nara and I qualified for complimentary press passes which was perfect because I could spend the saved money on Chocolate instead. JUST AS PLANNED.

The expo was mainly for unique international chocolate brands and chocolatier’s to showcase what they had to offer in Korea, chocolate sculptures of amazing detail and scale, a chocolate fashion show, demonstrations, and a few vendors had chocolate products available for sale that you could not normally buy here.

The eye candy at Salon Du Chocolat in Seoul was plentiful (of course!) so please sit back and enjoy the photos!

Amy Choco (에이미초코) was the cutest Korean booth at the event!!  They have a cafe and chocolate classes, I really want to visit and feature both very soon~ so please look forward to that! I would have bought some goodies to feature in my haul, but they only had things for display only T_T so adorable!

life-size chocolate dress plus a matching one for Barbie!

Amazing!

One draw to the Salon Du Chocolat event was to see the amazingly sculpted chocolate displays!

Ok this has to be the cutest owl I have ever seen

Amazing sculpting on these!  Some came from molds which is impressive, but work this delicate obviously was made from a steady hand. It must be so hard to work with chocolate like this.

They even had a few non-edible treats if you prefer to just wear your candy vs eat it!

All of these beautifully crafted goodies are by the French brand “Sweet Factory“ ♥  So much detail!

Tried to buy one of these bear macaroon pops, but the vender said they only had items for display D: argh

 I love that the owner’s apron says “Keep Calm and Dance On!” lol

Nara brought his fancy camera to snap pics as well~ a lot of the nicer photos in this post are by him ♥

chocolatiers crafting bitty chocolate pops of cuteness!

loving those boxes the chocolates from this place came in.

How about a little chocolate reading material!?

They also had an actual cocoa pod out for people to see~ I have never seen one of these in person!  It was like a huge dried up seed with even more inside… kinda gross-looking.  To think all the beautiful treats come from this thing.

My friend Yuri found some chocolate to match her jacket hehe looking good.

Life-sized chocolate bear from Hyundai Department Store.  At first I did not think it was real (just plastic or something) but when I got close to take the photo it smelled SO chocolatey. I wanted to snap off his ear and make a run for it lol

This looks almost *too* real…..

Not sure if I want to pet or eat this!

Chocolate purse complete with gold details!

and how about some Dior goodies to go in the chocolate purse?

GIANT chocolate watch

How about a nibble of jumbo chocolate lipstick, compact, and purse from Benefit. My face says it all….

Another main event at the Salon Du Chocolat expo was the chocolate fashion show!  Different designers used chocolate as a medium to craft some really interesting runway pieces.  Some looked a bit crazy and others looked like real outfits.

How about a dress covered in chocolate silver spikes with a matching headband?

Korea’s contribution to the chocolate fashion show

All in all it was a fun event and seemed to go smoothly for its first run in Korea~ It was a bit packed with families though.  I think many people assumed chocolate= for kids and because of the high price they would offer lots of samples, sadly hardly any samples to be had… or any worth pushing through kids and Ajuma to acquire lol.

Many of the vendors at Salon Du Chocolat expo in Seoul actually just had product up for display instead of sampling or selling, so we quickly realized this was actually more of a trade show for the brands to sell to Korean retail buyers wholesale…. not *exactly* what the event was hyped up to be (we assumed by the ticket price alone it would at least be filled with things to sample and buy)

Despite the lack of samples and places for me to blow my money on fancy calories (perhaps for the best) we still had a wonderful time seeing everything!! Nara is the one that actually found out about this event and wanted to go originally, so glad he spotted it!!

Salon Du Chocolat Haul from “Mary’s” Japan

Totally not what I planned, but the one chocolate shop I fell in love with ended up being a Japanese one, I swear I was looking for a Korean one to feature in the haul~ maybe next time. “Mary’s“not only had a lovely and stocked booth with items for purchase (yay! none of the cute places did!!) but they had someone crafting treats live with all sorts of cute details that just added to the appeal.

This was hands down the CUTEST vendor at the expo, I had to get something….I just HAD to. Look at the packaging!

After debating a bit and making puppy eyes and Nara with no success, I ended up buying the “Remiy” #10 set for about 28,000 won.

Not cheap, but it sure was beautiful to look at and Japanese chocolates always taste really yummy so I was sure I would enjoy every bite~  and I did!  The chocolate from Mary’s was so amazingly smooth and not overly sweet. Japanese have a great skill with making treats *just* sweet enough and that was the case with these ^^

I also bought a set of Mary’s “sunshine pops” that they had been making fresh that day.  Adorable mini truffles on a stick!

LINKS

♥ Salon Du Chocolat website ♥

♥ Mary’s Chocolate (Japanese)♥

♥ Coex Mall official site with event listings (English) ♥

Have you been to a Salon Du Chocolat event before? What chocolate item looked the most delicious or amazingly crafted in this post?  Would you feel bad eating any of the sculptures? Anything inspire you to make your own crazy chocolate creation? Leave a comment below and share!