Hong Kong mall coated in chocolate

Hong Kong’s Harbour City shopping centre is hosting its sixth annual Chocolate Trail until March 1.

For five weeks Hong Kong’s largest shopping destination has been transformed into ‘ChocoLand’, offering visitors a unique ‘Bean-To-Bar’ journey to deepen their appreciation of how premium chocolate is produced and how to ‘maximise the tasting pleasure’.

Chocolate Trail highlights will include an immersive and educational Chocolate Factory installation, chocolate workshops and seminars, live demonstrations by local and visiting chocolate master chefs, and interactive art exhibitions — all set against a backdrop of close to 30 participating Asian and European chocolate brands.

Harbour City is home to 17 branded chocolate stores – the largest range under one roof in the city – including  Bvlgari Il Cioccolato (Italy), Dalloyau (France), The Library Cafe – Prestat Chocolates (England), Chapon (France) and Frederic Blondeel (Belgium).

For the promotional period, another 10 pop-up stores have opened from chocolate brands originating in France, Belgium, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Chocolate Trail will also celebrate the Hong Kong launch of The Royal Touch by Carolyn Robb (England) and zChocolat (France).

The Chocolate Factory will take visitors of all ages on an interactive step-by-step “Bean-to-Bar” journey where they can experience the full chocolate production process – from planting a cocoa tree, fermentation and drying, to roasting, cracking, moulding and packaging. The Chocolate Factory will be in the mall, and will incorporate an interactive Chocolate Experience Gallery as well as a ChocoVan Cafe for visitors to sample a wide range of premium chocolate.

The chocolate workshops will provide insights on subjects such as chocolate culture, awarded chocolate tasting from The International Chocolate Awards and chocolate and Chinese tea pairing recommendations. Topics include chocolate tea-pairing workshops, fine chocolate tasting, chocolate kids college and a Muji chocolate snacks cooking class.

And the centre will host an interactive art exhibition From Cocoa to Choco – taking you through the Journey of Love by Belgian artist Ben Heine. With his original ‘Pencil vs Camera’ and ‘Flesh and Acrylic’ art forms, digital artist Heine will show a new series of artwork exclusively created  for the Chocolate Trail.