The
young Frenchman, named the top patissier on the planet last month by "The
World's 50 Best Restaurants" list, is an Instagram superstar.
Cedric Grolet was named the world's best pastry chef on "The World's 50 Best Restaurants" list. Photo by AFP
Videos
of him slicing through the 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 hyper-realistic pears, apricots, lemons,
peaches and even tomatoes, with Vogue -- a magazine not known for its
championing of high-calorie desserts -- saying they "leave you wanting to
lick the screen".
"His
fans cry, fall into his arms and demand autographs" and selfies, said the
usually 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 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's cube cake -- which pivots just like the real thing -- has become a cult
on the fashionable Parisian dinner circuit, although at 170 euros ($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's World Cup win
earlier this month.
Like
the members of the French football team, he is something of a working-class
hero.
Eating with our eyes
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.
"A
farmer gave me a basket of strawberries for helping him pick his crop and I
made a strawberry tart with them for my grandfather," who ran a small
hotel nearby, he told AFP.
It
went down so well that Grolet left school early to apprentice himself to the
village baker.
"I
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."
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.
Pastry creations by Le Meurice's pastry chef Cedric Grolet are pure "food porn", Vogue declared, with only a select few getting the chance to consummate their desire every day at the top Paris hotel where he works. Photo by AFP/Stephane De Sakutin
It
was also at Fauchon that he worked alongside Christophe Adam in its research
laboratory, developing new recipes.
"It
was every patissier's dream," he said, "trying new things every
day."
Like
Adam, who has since founded L'Eclair 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 "one of the most talented patissiers of his
generation".
'Naked patisserie'
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 "work even more on taste".
"Visual
beauty attracts the customer, but it is the taste that makes them come
back," 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 the real fruit.
"The
idea was to do away with the biscuit, the eggs, all the things whose taste
doesn't really do anything and to concentrate on the taste of the fruit,"
Grolet told AFP.
It
is what he calls "naked patisserie".
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 his with his blowtorch.
"Making
cakes is one thing but you have to know how to communicate. You cannot imagine
how many photos I take before posting one," he told AFP.
And
not being in the country does not stop him creating. He keeps in constant
contact with his laboratory at Le Meurice through WhatsApp.
"I
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," said the
self-confessed "hyperactive" globetrotter.
By AFP/ VNE