Copy link Copied Copy link Copied Subscribe to gift this article Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Already a subscriber? Login Late at night, as opera goers dressed in their finery descend the neo-Baroque steps of the Palais Garnier after a show, Cédric Grolet’s pastry chefs begin to arrive at his Avenue de l’Opéra pâtisserie, just a few paces away, crafting a symphony of their own. Here, they will work through the night, expertly kneading the dough for fluffy croissants that, in a few hours, will rise and flake into paper-thin layers.
They will prepare mountains of citrus, vanilla pods and ingredients to create the signature trompe l’oeil creations that landed Grolet the award for World’s Best Pastry Chef – twice – and ensure the perpetual mileage of queues and onlookers outside his six establishments and outposts worldwide. An audience is something Grolet has had to grow accustomed to. The queues began more than seven years ago when Paris’ iconic Le Meurice hotel gave him his own pâtisserie .
It came on the success of his imperceptibly realistic fruits, revealed to be exactingly executed desserts, developed during his time as executive pastry chef at the two-Michelin-starred restaurant Le Meurice Alain Ducasse. Then came Grolet’s first independent store on Avenue de l’Opéra, a pâtisserie and tearoom; a more casual space, a café, followed, where Grolet sells cookie-pizzas and croissant beignets. Soon, The Berk.
