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THURSDAY JULY 26, 2018 • THEEDGE FINANCIAL DAILY

WE LLBE ING . THE AR T S . WINE+DINE . ST YLE+DE SIG N . LE ISURE

FOOD BY ANNE-LAURE MONDESERT

Superstar pastry chef’s ‘food porn’ has Instagram drooling

WHEN Cedric Grolet takes out his pastry
knife, millions of mouths water. Th e young Pastry creations by Grolet
Frenchman, named the top patissier on are pictured at the five-star

the planet last month by “The World’s 50 Le Meurice Hotel in Paris.

Best Restaurants” list, is an Instagram su- His creations are not overly
perstar. Videos of him slicing through the sweet. Photo by AFP
exquisite fake fruit he creates to reveal their
tastebud-teasing interiors get millions of
views on social media.
Millions more drool over images of his
glossy hyperrealistic pears, apricots, lemons,
peaches and even tomatoes, with Vogue —
a magazine not known for championing
high-calorie desserts — saying they “leave
you wanting to lick the screen”.
“His fans cry, fall into his arms and de-
mand autographs” and selfies, said the usu-

ally sober French daily Le Monde.
His work is pure “food porn”, it declared,
with only a select few getting the chance to
consummate their desire everyday at the top
Paris hotel where he works. With high tea at
Le Meurice featuring his cakes sometimes
booked weeks in advance, Grolet opened
a tiny boutique there in March. Its shelves
empty within hours everyday.
His Rubik’s cube cake — which pivots
just like the real thing — has become a cult
on the fashionable Parisian dinner circuit,
although at €170 (RM796.52) for a cake for
six, only those with deep pockets can aff ord it.
Grolet has even made a blue, white and
red version to celebrate France’s World Cup
win earlier this month. Like the French foot-
ball team members, he is something of a winning prizes before leaving to make his He now works there as pastry chef under taste of the fruit,” Grolet told AFP.

working-class hero. name in Paris aged 20. There, he worked celebrity cook Alain Ducasse, who urged It is what he calls “naked patisserie”. His
for French gourmet food and delicatessen him to “work even more on taste”. “Visual tarts have a similar hyper-natural edge, with
Eating with our eyes chain Fauchon, which eventually sent him beauty attracts the customer, but it is the fruit as finely cut as fl ower petals.

The son of a hairdresser and truck driver to Beijing to help train its staff there. taste that makes them come back,” said With more than a million followers on

from a small town near Saint-Etienne in It was also at Fauchon that he worked Grolet, who as a millennial himself knows Instagram alone, Grolet is almost as savvy
central France, his moment of revelation alongside Christophe Adam in its research that Generation Y eats with its eyes. with his smartphone as he is with his blow-
came when he was only 13. “A farmer gave laboratory, developing new recipes. “It was His creations, not overly sweet, have torch. “Making cakes is one thing but you
me a basket of strawberries for helping him every patissier’s dream,” he said, “trying also endeared him to the calorie-conscious have to know how to communicate. You
pick his crop and I made a strawberry tart new things everyday.” beautiful people queueing everyday outside cannot imagine how many photos I take
with them for my grandfather”, who ran a Like Adam, who has since founded his mini-boutique, the first of what Grolet before posting one,” he told AFP.

small hotel nearby, he told AFP. L’Eclair de Genie, a chain in France and hopes will be a handful across the world. Also, not being in the country does not
It went down so well, Grolet left school Japan, Grolet has been crowned French He began perfecting his extraordinarily stop him from creating. He keeps in constant
early to apprentice himself to the village patissier of the year and hailed by mac- delicate fruit six years ago, with their highly contact with his laboratory at Le Meurice
baker. “I would make breads all night so aroon guru Pierre Herme as “one of the worked lifelike skins made from chocolate, through WhatsApp.
.
that I would be allowed to make the des- most talented patissiers of his generation” with a mousse or marmalade interior made “I draw and work even when I am on
serts at 11 in the morning. My reward was from the real fruit. the plane, sending back everything that is

to be able to slice the apples and cover the ‘Naked patisserie’ “The idea was to do away with the biscuit, in my head, and pictures of everything that
tarts in strawberries.” Grolet followed Adam to the exclusive Le the eggs, all the things whose taste doesn’t I loved eating,” said the self-confessed “hy-
He later studied fine patisserie and began Meurice, owned by the Sultan of Brunei. really do anything and to concentrate on the peractive” globetrotter. — AFP

Herme hails Grolet as one of the most talented patissiers of his Grolet seen during a photo session at Le Meurice Hotel in Paris. Grolet’s Rubik’s cube cake has become a cult on the fashionable
generation. Photo by Instagram/cedricgrolet Calorie-conscious beautiful people queue everyday outside his mini- Parisian dinner circuit. Photo by Instagram/cedricgrolet
boutique. Photo by AFP