Superstar chef鈥檚 patisserie has Instagram followers drooling
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When Cedric Grolet takes out his pastry knife, millions of mouths water. The young Frenchman, named the top patissier on the planet by 鈥淭he World鈥檚 50 Best Restaurants鈥 list, is an Instagram superstar. Videos of him slicing through the exquisite fake fruit he creates to reveal their tastebud-teasing interiors gets millions of views on social media.
Millions more drool over images of his glossy hyper-realistic pears, apricots, lemons, peaches and even tomatoes, with 鈥淰ogue鈥 鈥 a magazine not known for its championing of high-calorie desserts 鈥 saying they 鈥渓eave you wanting to lick the screen.鈥
鈥淗is fans cry, fall into his arms and demand autographs鈥 and selfies, said the French daily 鈥淟e Monde.鈥 His work is pure 鈥渇ood porn,鈥 it declared, with only a select few getting a chance to consummate their desire every day 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 every day.
His Rubik鈥檚 Cube cake 鈥 which pivots just like the real thing 鈥 has become a cult on the fashionable Parisian dinner circuit, although at US$200 for a cake for six, only those with the deep pockets can afford it.
Grolet has even made a blue, white and red version to celebrate France鈥檚 World Cup win last month.
Like the members of the French football team, he is something of a working-class hero. The son of a hairdresser and truck driver from a small town near Saint-Etienne in central France, his moment of revelation came when he was only 13.
鈥淎 farmer gave me a basket of strawberries for helping him pick his crop and I made a strawberry tart with them for my grandfather,鈥 who ran a small hotel nearby, he said. It went down so well that Grolet left school early to apprentice himself to the village baker.
鈥淚 would make bread all night so that I would be allowed to make the desserts at 11 in the morning. My reward was to be able to slice the apples and cover the tarts in strawberries.鈥
He later studied fine patisserie and began winning prizes before leaving to make his name in Paris aged 20. There he worked for the French gourmet food and delicatessen chain Fauchon, which eventually sent him to Beijing to help train its staff there.
It was also at Fauchon that he worked alongside Christophe Adam in its research laboratory, developing new recipes. 鈥淚t was every patissier鈥檚 dream,鈥 he said, 鈥渢rying new things every day.鈥 Like Adam, who has since founded L鈥橢clair de Genie, a chain in France and Japan, Grolet has been crowned French patissier of the year and hailed by macaroon guru Pierre Herme as 鈥渙ne of the most talented patissiers of his generation.鈥 Grolet followed Adam to the exclusive Le Meurice, which is owned by the Sultan of Brunei. He now works there as pastry chef under celebrity cook Alain Ducasse, who urged him to 鈥渨ork even more on taste.鈥
鈥淰isual beauty attracts the customer, but it is the taste that makes them come back,鈥 said Grolet, who as a millennial himself knows that Generation Y eats with its eyes.
The fact that his creations are not overly sweet has also endeared him to the calorie-conscious beautiful people who queue every day outside his mini-boutique, the first of what Grolet hopes will be a handful across the world.
He began perfecting his extraordinarily delicate fruit six years ago, with their highly worked lifelike skins made from chocolate, with a mousse or marmalade interior made from real fruit.
鈥淭he idea was to do away with the biscuit, the eggs, all the things whose taste doesn鈥檛 really do anything and to concentrate on the taste of the fruit,鈥 Grolet said. It is what he calls 鈥渘aked patisserie.鈥
His tarts have a similar hyper-natural edge, with fruit as finely cut as flower petals. With more than a million followers on Instagram alone, Grolet is almost as savvy with his smartphone as he is with his blowtorch.
鈥淢aking cakes is one thing but you have to know how to communicate. You cannot imagine how many photos I take before posting one,鈥 he said.
And not being in the country does not stop him creating. 鈥淚 draw and work even when I am on the plane, sending back everything that is in my head, and pictures of everything that I loved eating,鈥 said the self-confessed 鈥渉yperactive鈥 globetrotter.
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