“Learning from the experts has always been the most natural way to become the kind of patissier that I am.” Pierre HerméPierre Hermé
Pierre Hermé is recognised by his peers for wanting to revolutionise the traditions of his craft, taking patisserie out of the kitchen and creating the concept of “luxury patisserie”. He removes excessive or useless decorations that encumber cakes and pastries, uses sugar as a seasoning like salt, to bring out other nuances of flavour, and imagines new combinations of textures and flavours from his memories, travels, encounters or new tastes he has discovered. Pierre Hermé works like a stylist, sketching out his new creations in his Creative Workshop, designing recipes and deciding on the proportions of the different ingredients. His team of patisserie chefs then experiment until the result he has imagined is achieved.
At the end of this creative process, Pierre Hermé names his patisseries: Mogador for example, a combination of passion fruit and milk chocolate, Montebello, a blend of strawberry or raspberry and pistachio, and Ispahan, his most famous dessert created in 1997, a blend of raspberry, rose and litchi.
Pierre Hermé owes his international reputation to his macarons, which he first learned to make in 1976, since which time he has considerably expanded the range of fillings to develop the flavour, to the point that it is now considered an almost infinite field of creative exploration.
Gaston Lenôtre will always be one of the great masters of French patisserie. I left Alsace at the age of 14 to become one of his apprentices. He gave me the basics, the in-depth knowledge and the values that I have built on ever since - attention to detail, meticulous work and passing on expertise. I will always work with these values in mind and I will transfer them to the people who work with me.