Nothing quite gets the heart racing like a good bite of chocolate, fact. A study by the BBC reported that whilst eating chocolate there is an increase in brain activity and heart rate more intense than passionate kissing.
Nothing quite gets the heart racing like a good bite of chocolate, fact. A study by the BBC reported that whilst eating chocolate there is an increase in brain activity and heart rate more intense than passionate kissing. Increasing our serotonin and endorphin levels, chocolate is one of the most psychoactive foods. Since chocolate in its solid form was invented, in 1847 by Joseph Fry & Son, the cacao-based foodstuff has had widespread appeal. One of the most popular food types and flavours in the world, chocolate is traditionally given on Valentine’s Day (hearts), Hanukkah (coins), Christmas (tree decorations) and this weekend on Easter (bunnies and eggs). To coincide with the Easter holiday and also to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the classic childhood film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, food artist extraordinaires and the duo behind AnOther's 10th Birthday life size Lanvin cake, Bompas & Parr a.k.a Sam Bompas and Harry Parr have created a five tonne chocolate waterfall at Whiteleys Shopping Centre is open from today until Monday 25 April. Flowing at a rate of 12,000 litres an hour, the waterfall serves to keep the chocolate fully mixed and pulls together Bompas & Parr’s favourite beans from around the world. The temporary installation will also include the world’s first cloud of breathable chocolate as well as offering visitors, who will be asked to don protective suits and umbrellas, the chance to bottle and take away their own chocolate elixir – a concentrated chocolate cordial.
Here we speak to one half of the innovative duo, Sam Bompas about their chocolate creation:
How did this whole idea to create a five tonne chocolate waterfall come about?
People think we’re going in for the kill on Wonka but the original story we are working to is actually even better: Alexis Soyer is my real food hero. He was a Victorian Jamie Oliver – a showman with a heart Soyer's Grotto of Ondine as part of his Universal Symposium provided the original inspiration for the whole project. You entered the grotto through a waterfall. It was free to enter but of course you’d get wet. Soyer monetised it by renting small holey umbrellas for a penny and larger once that might keep you dry for double the amount. We were really keen to sex up the original rather than slavishly copy. The obvious answer was to have a waterfall running with chocolate.
Are you trying to rival Willy Wonka’s claim that “no other chocolate factory mixes its chocolate by waterfall”?
Ironically the waterfall does keep the chocolate mixed. We are using a mixture of chocolate, water and hydrocolloid, alganate to increase viscosity and have been working with scientist Dr Rachel Edwards Stewart to get the mixture right. Even with the alginate there’s some sedimentation unless the chocolate mixture is agitated. So the waterfall does in fact have a practical purpose to keep the chocolate mixed.
It’s on a pretty epic scale. We’ve hired in some of the most powerful pumping equipment known to mankind. We actually had to put a valve on it otherwise it was jetting ten meters. We were worried people would be blasted off the rickety rope bridge they are using to cross the face of the waterfall.
There's a danger guests will get chocolaty as they step through the waterfall, but everyone will be totally suited up with shoe covers and hazmat suits. They'll also have sturdy umbrellas. Everyone knows what they are letting themselves in for though, so we're not anticipating expensive dry cleaning bills sent to us!
How do you think you have done?
It’s pretty awe inspiring to cross a rope bridge across the surface of chocolate waterfall.
From initial conception, how much work goes into creating something as monumental as is?
We’ve not slept for weeks but doing something like this sees the realisation of one of Harry’s and my ultimate goals. Flooding a building with chocolate and using it as a material to create features on a geographical scale.
How do you overcome the strict Health & Safety issues and restrictions?
I have more phone numbers of Environmental Health Officers in my address book than any others. Our next company after Bompas & Parr will be one looking at extreme health and safety briefs. We’ve flooded buildings with booze, created clouds of Hendrick’s Gin and tonic so that people can become intoxicated through their lungs and eyeballs, built death slides and created cafés filled with a herd of albino rabbits. If you put the proper systems in place everything is possible.
Is there ever such a thing as too much chocolate?
Only if you fall in it!
What is your favourite aspect of this chocolate waterfall?
The bottling plant where you can bottle your own chocolate elixir. You’re able to infuse it with various botanicals including juniper and Frankincense.
The beard snoods that hirsute men need to wear (to stop any hair falling in the waterfall and river) are pretty satisfying too. They have a special metal strip in them so that all food leaving a processing plant can go through a metal detector. Finding a blue beard snood in your ready meal would be a disaster!
When beginning a new project do you always set yourselves challenging goals?
Of course. Probably the most challenging came last summer when we set out to chart The Complete History of Food for Courvoisier. The installation included foie gras Ferrero Rocher, flooded dining rooms with live eels in the water and the world’s first bio-responsive food – a jelly that changed colour and pulsated in time with your heart rate.
What’s next for Bompas & Parr?
It’ll be a busy few weeks. We’re launching a range of jelly moulds on the 26th April with Selfridges and the very next day we’ll be partying with Martha Stewart in NY to celebrate the Royal Wedding.
Bompas & Parr's Chocolate Waterfall is open Friday 22 – Monday 25 April at Whiteleys Shopping Centre, Bayswater, London.
Text by Lucia Davies
