From statuesque chocolate creations that gather millions of views on Instagram to dessert-only restaurants fusing pastry cooking techniques with savoury ingredients, Kat Odell curates the ultimate global bucket list for dessert lovers
There’s always room for dessert, right? Well, when Cédric Grolet, Eunji Lee and Dinara Kasko are in the kitchen, there should be.
Over the last few years, realism-inspired desserts have been the talk of the sweet gastronomic world. They have also taken over Instagram, with thanks due in part to Parisian pastry prince (and former World’s Best Pastry Chef) Cédric Grolet and his stunning trompe l'oeil fruit cakes captured in catchy social media videos.
But he’s not the only one breaking the internet. More recently, New York’s Eunji Lee has amassed a devout following for her Korean-French desserts, like her popular corn-shaped cake; while Ukrainian-born architect-turned-pastry chef Dinara Kasko is leaning on computer modelling and 3D printing to scheme her edible geometric wonders.
Instagram has become a powerful tool for chefs not only to share innovative culinary techniques and their eye-catching results with a global audience, but also as a way to learn – whether it’s how to use a bicycle pump to puff dough or how to create a life-sized perfect young Thai coconut cake – with pastry chefs inspiring each other (and their drooling fans) even from opposite sides of the world.
Discover eight of the world’s most inspired pastry chefs and their iconic desserts.
Eunji Lee – Lysée, New York
44 E 21st St, New York, NY 10010, United States
lyseenyc.com
instagram.com/eunji.leeee
Pastry chef Eunji Lee’s corn cake – a diminutive dessert shaped to look like an ear of corn – has been New York’s biggest sweet smash hit since Dominique Ansel unleased the cronut on the Big Apple ten years ago. Dessert enthusiasts have flocked to her jewel box of a French technique-rooted, Korean ingredient-embracing café and patisserie for the last year since Lysée launched in the city’s Gramercy neighbourhood, lining up for two hours before the shop opens, eager to snag one of the limited-production cakes.
Lee opened the stunning, feminine-feeling, cream-hued bi-level pastry parlour with her husband Matthieu Lobry – the two met while working under superstar pastry whiz Cédric Grolet (see below) at Paris’ Le Meurice. She builds her corn creation with multiple components: a corn-based cake, corn mousse, sablé, grilled corn cream, corn caramel and corn crémeux. Patrons can score one of the six ground floor café seats for dine-in desserts, or queue up to grab and go from the second, art gallery-esque floor.
Natsuko Shoji – Fleurs d’Été, Tokyo
1 Chome-35-2 Uehara, Shibuya City, Tokyo 151-0064, Japan
ete.tokyo
instagram.com/natsuko.ete
Inspired by iconic designs from powerhouse fashion brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton, Natsuko Shoji has been making waves for the last nine years with her luxury fruit-topped cakes. Originally sold exclusively to friends (and friends of friends) out of her one-table Shibuya-based French restaurant Été, to meet customer demand two years ago Shoji debuted nearby Fleurs d’Été – a takeaway cake shop.
While former Asia’s Best Female Chef Shoji artfully organises myriad Japanese fruits and other ingredients like chestnuts atop her desserts, her signature Miyazaki mango iteration is what first put her on the map. “Japanese mangoes are very tender and not fibrous,” explains the chef, which enables her to cut and shape slices of the fruit into what looks like rose petals. The cake’s base is a sablé layered with vanilla bean custard cream. Those keen to try can order via Omakase (JPY14,000- JPY15,000); Shoji always offers her signature mango cake alongside a seasonal selection, like grape.
Elena Reygadas – Rosetta and La Panadería de Rosetta, Mexico City
Colima 166, Roma Nte., Cuauhtémoc, 06700 Mexico City, CDMX, Mexico
rosetta.com.mx
instagram.com/elena_reygadas
It’s impossible to spend an early morning in Mexico City without a visit to chef Elena Reygadas’ beloved La Panadería de Rosetta, the Mexican bakery whose smash hit Rol de Guayaba – a round-shaped flaky pastry filled with cream cheese custard and brick-coloured guava jam – is a global phenomenon. But over at her 13-year-old Colonia Roma-based, Italian-inspired Mexican restaurant – No.49 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2023 – her sophisticated desserts reach new levels.
“I like to experiment with traditional and well-known ingredients, presenting them in unconventional or unexpected ways,” states The World’s Best Female Chef 2023, referencing her signature Hoja Santa and White-Bean Criollo Cacao, a dessert she added to the menu in 2019 that blends two ancestral Mexican ingredients: hoja santa (root beer plant) and cacao. The chef notes that she once witnessed the two plants growing together: “This is how it became clear to me that these two ingredients could coexist in a dessert, just as they do in nature.” The minimalist dish includes a crisp, sugar-coated hoja santa leaf, under which sits rare white Criollo cacao bean nibs, a stone-ground ganache made from the same cacao, and a quenelle of hoja santa ice cream.
Will Goldfarb – Room4Dessert, Bali
Jl. Raya Sanggingan, Kedewatan, Kecamatan Ubud, Kabupaten Gianyar, Bali 80561, Indonesia
room4dessert.com
instagram.com/willtgoldfarb
In a country famous for its sambals and satays, ex-New York chef Will Goldfarb – who, in 2021, was named The World’s Best Pastry Chef – has brought something new to Indonesia. For the last decade, among the lush rice paddies of Ubud on the island of Bali, Goldfarb has been weaving together a locally-minded menu best known for its desserts. Goldfarb, who originally opened Room4Dessert almost two decades ago in New York, offers a 15-course tasting menu with botanical, architectural desserts that feature a mix of modernish techniques and exotic Indonesian ingredients.
A standout is his Snake Puff, a plated confection inspired by the classic French apple tarte tatin. His version is deconstructed and reworked with caramelised snake fruit seasoned with house-made snake fruit vinegar and finished with mangosteen peel bitters, served with cold-infused frangipani flowers whipped cream and a pastry that he puffs by pumping air into the dough with a bicycle pump – a modernist technique he attributes to Albert Adrià, who originally designed it for his famous Air Croissant.
Janice Wong – 2am: Dessert Bar and Janice Wong, Singapore
21A Lor Liput, Singapore 277733
2amdessertbar.com
instagram.com/janicewong2am
Singapore has Janice Wong – local master of chocolate – to thank for many sweet things, including her timeless contribution to the cacao world when she served as the first person to grow the tree in Singapore, creating the city-state’s first single-origin chocolate. Celebrated for fusing together food and art at her myriad businesses, including 17-year-old 2am: Dessert Bar and nearly-decade-old namesake Janice Wong Singapore, this two-time Asia’s Best Pastry Chef winner explains that she grew up in Japan, so her desserts continue to be driven by both Japanese ingredients and seasonality.
“I was mesmerised by the zen gardens of Kyoto and made a collection of different zen garden-inspired desserts,” she says of Spring Kyoto Garden. What looks like a rock arrangement involves a glass plate upon which sit three types of ice cream designed to resemble rocks: pistachio kuromitsu (Japanese black sugar syrup) ice cream, strawberry hibiscus and chocolate fukinoto (hyper seasonal bitter-tasting green Japanese mountain vegetable) dipped into shades of grey chocolate, garnished with a green tea sponge and almond milk sauce. “This dessert is very special to me as it is one of the most adventurous and daring combinations of sweet and bitter,” she explains of her unexpected use of fukinoto in a dessert.
Dinara Kasko – Ukraine
dinarakasko.com
instagram.com/dinarakasko
For just under a decade now, Ukrainian architect-turned-pastry chef (and now refugee living in the U.K.) Dinara Kasko has been wowing the world with her geometric sculptural cakes, often inspired by fruit, from bananas to giant strawberries. Using a 3D modelling programme and incorporating 3D printing, last year’s 50 Next winner shapes her extraordinary mousse-filled confections using custom silicon moulds, a separate business which she launched in 2016; today the moulds (and accompanying cake recipes) are used by cooks in 100 countries around the world.
Inspired by summer fruits, one of her more recent creations is a giant strawberry cake – even the seeds for this eye-catching confection have their own mould. Kasko fills the dessert – weighing in at around 4kg – with red velvet sponge, strawberry purée, strawberry confit and a whipped ganache flavoured with a strawberry and cherry purée, plus white chocolate. While Kasko doesn’t have her own brick and mortar bakery, she has consulted with businesses around the world which offer desserts made with her moulds and recipes, including Boston’s Jonquils Café & Bakery and Flosophia Pastry in Istanbul.
Pía Salazar – Nuema, Quito
Bello Horizonte E11-12 y, Quito 170517, Ecuador
nuema.ec
instagram.com/piasalazarort
Pastry chef Pía Salazar and her chef husband Alejandro Chamorro have firmly established themselves as culinary trailblazers for Latin America: in 2020, Nuema – their earthy-toned, indigenous ingredient-championing fine dining destination – became the first Ecuadorean restaurant to appear on the Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list, and earlier this year Salazar was crowned The World’s Best Pastry Chef – the first person from Latin America to win this title.
Celebrated for her talent blending sweet and savoury flavours into unexpected, minimalist desserts, Salazar is perhaps best-known for her marriage of four unusual suspects: white seaweed, coconut, black garlic and yeast. A dish inspired by her father, who passed away during the pandemic, each ingredient represents an aspect of his personality. The chef finishes the dish with depigmented seaweed, created through a process that takes a week, whose texture is meant to mimic delicate young coconut meat.
Cédric Grolet – Cédric Grolet Le Meurice, Paris; Cédric Grolet at The Berkeley, London; and Cédric Grolet Singapore, Singapore
cedric-grolet.com
instagram.com/cedricgrolet
Is Paris’ Cédric Grolet the world’s most famous pastry chef? With his eight million Instagram followers and catchy pastry-building reels highlighting the technique behind his realism-driven desserts, the 2018 World’s Best Pastry Chef winner might very well be. As the former dessert director (executive pastry chef, to be precise) at legendary French chef Alain Ducasse’s two Michelin star Le Meurice, Grolet began to hone his style, sculpting diminutive ingredient-driven cakes inspired by singular fruits, like a pear, or his more recent young Thai coconut.
The chef says that the latter – which also happens to be gluten-free – was inspired by his global travels and love of coconut water, so he chose to recreate the fruit in a life-size model with the kind of textures one would find in a coconut. The outcome is impressive: layers of crunchy coconut praline, coconut gel with pieces of coconut, and coconut water gel covered in a lime ganache shaped to look identical to a young Thai coconut with a final thin white chocolate shell.
Browse restaurant and bar recommendations across the world on the 50 Best Discovery website, and follow 50 Best on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for the latest news, features and videos.
