Chocolate Christmas Tree

Chefs Battle Over World's Tallest Chocolate Christmas Tree

A chocolate arms race is heating up this holiday season as two French chocolatiers vie for recognition as creators of the world's tallest chocolate Christmas tree.

The Yuletide rivalry began in 2007 when chef Alain Roby, 54, constructed a 22-foot-tall chocolate Christmas tree for a holiday display in a Hong Kong shopping center. Though the work was never submitted to Guinness for recognition, it nonetheless stood beside a vertical banner that proudly declared it a "New World Record."

It wasn't the first of Roby's chocolate-themed feats. The French-born pastry chef at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago broke the Guinness World Record for World's Tallest Chocolate Sculpture in October 2006. His 20-foot-high replica of three New York skyscrapers, displayed at the F.A.O. Schwartz toy store in Manhattan, was feted at the time as a marvel of culinary engineering.

Michel Euler, AP

French chocolate maker Patrick Roger poses next to his new creation, a 32-foot-high chocolate Christmas tree in Sceaux, south of Paris, Nov. 30, 2010.

Then came Patrick Roger, a bold Parisian more than a decade Roby's junior. In late November, Roger unveiled a massive 32-foot-tall, 4-ton chocolate Christmas tree in his studio in the outskirts of Paris.

It, too, was hailed as a structural wonder, and though his tree far surpassed the height of his colleague's, Roger laid no claim to a world record.

Instead, he announced that it had all been done for charity, auctioning off parts of the tree and donating proceeds to an organization that studies neuromuscular disease.

His creation, which took a month to make and used $45,000 worth of 65 percent dark chocolate, attracted worldwide media attention and established him as the hot new name in large-scale chocolate sculpting.

When told by AOL News that his Christmas tree world record had apparently been broken -- by a Frenchman, no less -- Roby responded in a phone interview, "I can do 40 feet any time."

The author and celebrity chef, who has lived in the Chicago area for over 20 years and professes a deep love for the United States, added, "And I can line up sponsors any time. I'll bring the title back to the United States!"

While calls to Roger seeking comment on the nascent rivalry were not immediately returned, his publicist sent AOL News a brief e-mail saying that the chef was busy preparing for the Christmas holiday.

At the moment, neither Frenchman holds the Guinness World Records seal for tallest chocolate tree -- but the Internet has become an imprimatur all its own. A Google search for "world's tallest chocolate Christmas tree" yielded seven page hits from relatively obscure sites, four of which handed Roby the record.

A search for "giant chocolate Christmas tree," however, delivered dozens of page hits for Roger, including video coverage from established news sites in the United States, England and China.

So it's tough to say just who the real top chocolate-Christmas-tree-sculpting chef is.

And though the men have never met, they would appear to be fillings of the same truffle. Roby, too, is charitable, donating proceeds from sales at his store in Geneva, Ill., to Tiny Hearts, an organization that helps fight congenital heart problems.

As evidence of his sanguine side, Roby complimented Roger on his decision to use 65 percent chocolate for his tree.

"That's a good chocolate," Roby said. "Very easy to work with. It's a little harder than milk or white chocolate -- it's like cement."

There's no reason, after all, for a chocolate rivalry to be bitter. From time to time, it's just unsweetened.

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