The Liste crowned young Bastien Blanc Tailleur as the world's most creative pastry chef. The young professional has redeemed the demodé strand of pièces montées and wedding cakes, bringing new life to the all-French school of Carême-style decorative pastry. "Sometimes we put 6,000 hours of work into a unique piece, ours is haute couture," he cheered.
Cover photo: @DR
The pastry chef
It's not all about The World's 50 Best Restaurants: the La Liste awards ceremony was recently held in Paris, bringing together the world's pastry elite for an international forum and the presentation of a special award. The ranking in this case does not represent a poll of insiders, but is based on an algorithm that integrates as many as 1100 international sources, in an attempt to center a result as neutral and objective as possible.
As Food & Sens reports , the success of Bastien Blanc Tailleur, voted the world's most creative pastry chef, stands out in particular. Thirty-two years old, he is a specialist in pièces montées and wedding cakes, whose monumentality loses all sense of anachronism and kitsch, without shedding the organoleptic experience. His have been called "gastronomic haute couture creations," unique pieces from time to time that sublimate historic national savoir-faire, contested far beyond borders in the world's palaces and finest historic residences.
Blanc Tailleur was, after all, a predestinate: it was from his art-collecting parents, during his childhood in Haute-Savoie, that he borrowed a passion for the beautiful and a greed for rarities, and then trained in Normandy, stopped for three years in Toulouse, perfected his skills in Paris at Yannick Alléno's Carette Tea Room and the George V, and finally flew to the United States. What won critics over was his extraordinary skill in handling the classical decorative repertoire of a national art, in the wake of François Vatel, Antonin Carême, and Urbain Dubois, who codified decorative pastry.
They are precious figurative motifs in sugar or caramel, pastillage or glace royale, decorating imposing pièces montées of an almost architectural character. Flowers, putti, festoons meticulously chiseled with the patience and skill of a goldsmith. In the past there was even an edible version of Milan Dome, complete with arches and doors. In the arsenal, after all, there is an almost endless collection of molds, put together year after year following his family pattern.
"I am very honored to receive this award, which is a recognition of the work and passion that my team and I devote to the preparation of our unique creations," Blanc Tailleur said on the occasion. "We are blessed to be able to make French pastry and luxury shine all over the world thanks to our savoir-faire. My work is in the vein of decorative pastry. Like a maison of haute couture, we sometimes spend up to 6,000 hours in the making of a cake and its many ornaments."
