Grolet, who was named the World’s Best Pastry Chef in 2018, currently works at Alain Ducasse’s two-Michelin-starred Le Meurice hotel restaurant in Paris and has accrued 1.3m Instagram followers posting pictures of his desserts.
His famous dishes include a Rubik’s Cube cake – comprised of 27 individual pastries – and signature sculpted fruits made without white sugar of flour.
The chef is bringing some of his creations to London with a residency at Harrods from 30 August – 8 September, but says he hopes to have a more permanent base in the capital in future.
“Yes, of course I would like to open in London,” he told BigHospitality. “It would be my first choice [for a patisserie] after Paris. London is one of my favourite cities, but I’m working in Paris for now.”
Grolet draws all his dishes before attempting to create them in the kitchen and describes each recipe as a “constant evolution”.
His Harrods menu includes ‘The Bee’, specially developed for the collaboration using Harrods honey and Earl Grey tea, and the ‘Royal Gala Apple’ from his 2.0 fruit collection. The dessert has the appearance of a toffee apple but features a ganache centre surrounded by soft jelly.
“The time it takes to develop a dish depends on each one,” he says. “It could be one day, or years. I have some pastry that has been five years in the making that’s still not ready, so I’ll keep trying.”
Harrods is running the residency series with three other world-famous pastry chefs, starting with Pierre Hermé (19-25 July) and followed by Angelo Musa (2-11 August) and Yann Couvreur (16-25 August).
Pick up the July issue of Restaurant magazine to read Hermé's Masterclass on creating his Isaphan macarons.
