Over the last several months we've had many back and forths to discuss a unique collaboration with Chef Romain Fournel, of the newly opened JW Marriott Nashville. It wasn't but a few weeks ago that the time finally appeared in both of our schedules where we could make something happen... just in time to document something special with Easter quickly approaching. If you've spent much time working for a hotel you know, there are always moments when management wants you to do something special, but around the holidays they take it to a different level. There couldn't be a better time to capitalize on the extra resources they're willing to provide you to help grow, strengthen, and diversify your team's skill set. For example, around Christmas, there's a very good chance you'll be building a gingerbread house of large proportions, for a Mother's Day brunch you may be asked to make several showpieces to put up on the buffet, and around Easter you may be making a lot of extra large Easter eggs, or in this case making a display of Easter bunnies.
When you hear, a display of Easter bunnies, you may have this idea in mind that someone probably just cast something in a mold and did some decorating with an airbrush, but that wasn't the case. In true Easter fashion, the bunnies spawned from egg molds, but what he did after that was interesting. If you've seen many sculptures on social media as of late, you've probably seen the technique Romain used made famous by Christophe Morel where you work with chocolate in a state where it's almost like putty to sculpt and form (instead of just casting) something out of chocolate. To give you an idea of what goes into something like this Romain and his sous chef, Steve Acosta spent almost an afternoon to build one of the seven sculptures on display.