The Chocolate News from Melbourne

Across the international dateline in Australia, Thursday the 21st has already become Friday the 22nd, which is the opening day of this year's Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. The Saturday-morning chocolate workshop with Frenchman Thibault Fregoni of Monsieur Truffe (who gets the endorsement of the Melbourne blog Tomato) and German transplant Arno Backes of Koko Black is already sold out. But eager participants who hang around the doors of the Council for Adult Education downtown on Flinders Lane might get a lucky break. And word on the street is that Backes is about to open his own shop in the upmarket suburb Toorak.