In the pantheon of legendary pastry talents, the French will point to Marie-Antoine Carême, Gaston Lenôtre, Pierre Hermé, perhaps Dominique Ansel for his culture-bending cronut, and now Cédric Grolet who, at 31, is arguably the most recognizable figure in the pastry world today.
Head pastry chef at Le Meurice hotel since 2012, Grolet’s imaginative trompe l’oeil desserts, like the lemon, apple, or hazelnut that he featured in his first book Fruits, and his inexhaustible capacity for experimentation, has earned him high honors; he was named the Best Pastry Chef in the World by Les Grandes Tables du Monde collective and again best-of for 2018 by the influential restaurant guide Gault & Millau. His creations aren’t just devastatingly beautiful works of art that should be admired and contemplated with the same consideration bestowed on any painting or sculpture, but perfectly of the moment.
He has excelled at what the French call désucrage or de-sweetening/moderating the level of added sugar in favor of revealing the natural sugars in other ingredients like fruits and high quality dark chocolate. In real terms, this means you can taste the nuanced textures in his fruit-based desserts because they aren’t masked by added sugar. But beyond that, it is his mastery of balance,…
