The Feisty Foodie

Opinionated Food Critic

  • Around NYC
    • Brooklyn
      • Bay Ridge
    • Bronx
    • Downtown Lunch
    • Long Island Eats
    • Manhattan
      • Chelsea
      • Chinatown
      • East Village
      • Financial District
      • Flatiron District
      • Gramercy
      • Greenwich Village
      • Hell’s Kitchen
      • Lower East Side
      • Midtown
      • Murray Hill
      • SoHo
      • Tribeca
      • Upper East Side
      • Upper West Side
      • West Village
    • Queens
      • Astoria
      • Bayside
      • Corona
      • Elmhurst
      • Flushing
      • Elmhurst
      • Flushing
      • Forest Hills
      • Howard Beach
      • Jackson Heights
      • Kew Gardens
  • Cuisine
    • Africa
      • Moroccan
    • Americas
      • American
      • Argentinian
      • Brazilian
      • Cajun
      • Canadian
      • Creole
      • Cuban
      • Hawaiian
      • Mexican
      • New American
      • Southwestern
    • Asia
      • Cambodian
      • Chinese
      • Filipino
      • Indian
      • Indonesian
      • Japanese
      • Korean
      • Malaysian
      • Russian
      • Thai
      • Ukrainian
      • Vietnamese
    • Europe
      • Austrian
      • Belgian
      • French
      • Greek
      • Italian
      • Lebanese
      • Mediterranean
      • Spanish
      • Turkish
    • Other
      • Fast Food
      • Fusion
      • Tapas
      • Vegetarian
  • Feisty Fun
    • Articles
      • Feisty Bento
    • Baseball
    • BlindBakerNYC
    • Events
      • FF Giveaways
    • Fiction
    • Food Memories
    • Food Services
      • CSA
      • Fresh Direct
      • Ready to Cook
    • Jenn of NEB
    • Product Reviews
    • Project 365
    • Recipe Fridays
    • Serial Thursdays
    • The Beer Boor
    • Tuesdays with TT
  • Recipes
    • Baked Goods
    • BBQ
    • Beef
    • Beverages
    • Breakfast
    • Brunch
    • Chicken
    • Desserts
    • Duck
    • Lamb
    • One Pot Meals
    • Pasta
    • Pork
    • Ramen
    • Sauces
    • Seafood
    • Side Dishes
    • Steak
  • Restaurants
    • Bakeries
    • BBQ
    • Bistro
    • Breakfast
    • Burgers
    • Cheese
    • Deli
    • Desserts
      • Ice cream
    • Pizza
    • Seafood
    • Shabu shabu
    • Steakhouse
      • The Great Steakhouse Tour of NYC
    • Tea
    • Trucks/Carts
    • Wine Bar
  • Stadium Eats
    • Citi Field
    • Citizens Bank Park
    • Nationals Park
    • PNC Park
    • Shea Stadium (Closed)
    • Yankee Stadium
  • Travels
    • Asia
      • Hong Kong
    • Europe
      • England
        • London
      • France
        • Paris
      • Greece
        • Athens
      • Spain
        • Barcelona
      • Turkey
        • Istanbul
    • North America
      • Canada
        • Montreal
      • United States
        • Arizona
          • Phoenix
        • California
          • Los Angeles
          • San Diego
          • San Francisco
        • Connecticut
        • Georgia
        • Hawaii
          • Maui
        • Illinois
          • Chicago
        • Louisiana
          • Baton Rouge
          • New Orleans
        • Maryland
          • Baltimore
        • Massachusetts
          • Boston
        • Nevada
          • Las Vegas
        • New Jersey
        • North Carolina
          • Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill
        • Pennsylvania
          • Philadelphia
          • Pittsburgh
        • Texas
          • Austin
        • Washington
          • Seattle
        • Washington DC
    • South America
      • Argentina
        • Buenos Aires
        • Iguazu Falls
      • Peru

Top Ten Pastry Chefs in America 2011

June 20, 2011 by BeerBoor 15 Comments

Recently ICE hosted Dessert Professional’s annual awards ceremony, honoring the ten best pastry chefs in America. The Blind Baker covered this event in three parts last year, so yep, as Yvo’s not a huge fan of sweets and had another event to attend, she could only stop by for a short time, so I picked up the slack and made the huge sacrifice to eat my way through their confections.

With some time before the ten winners were introduced, we were able to wander through the kitchens as the chefs and their teams set up for the onslaught. Here, Yoni Morales’ team begins the process of plating their mojito, which you’ll see again shortly.

Incidentally, I noted that many of the plates, disposable and otherwise, used this night by the chefs can be bought for home use (or restaurant use, of course) at restaurantware.com. So if you have a little dessert or appetizer you want to serve to lots of people at your next party, they made these chefs’ desserts look great, so why not yours?

Sylvain Leroy created a whole suite of sweets for the press, and had laid them out in preparation for the masses.

As the kitchens were getting overcrowded and chefs were scurrying about with last-minute prep, I took a few moments to check out the chocolate room, sponsored by Guittard. Guittard brought along several chocolates, from white and milk to several dark chocolates of varying provenance and intensity. Wines were offered as complements to the flavors of the chocolates, but really, it’s hard to top drinking wine and eating chocolate regardless of the suggested pairings!

Back to the rooms, and one of the more eye-catching creations and displays, Francisco Migoya’s Black Forest Pop.

Ooooh, you say that’s mousse, cake and cherry? I want it! But I’ll wait till later.

Lipstick on a Pig, from Tariq Hanna, kind of deconstructed your typical peanut butter and jelly sandwich, into a rich peanut butter, strawberry macaron, marshmallow, and macaron lid. I loved the presentation both per-plate and as a spiral pattern of sample dishes.

Shortly, we were herded into the presentation room, where each of the ten chefs were announced and applauded. Hall of Fame honoree Jacquy Pfeiffer, co-founder and owner of the French Pastry School at City Colleges of Chicago said a few words (here flanked by Top Tenner Antonio Bachour, Executive Pastry Chef at Quattro at Trump Soho in New York) about his experiences and hopes for the craft, before we were invited to enjoy all the desserts presented from the top chefs.

Back I wandered to check out Heather Carlucci-Rodriguez, Pastry Chef at PRINT at the Ink Hotel in New York (and the lone female in the honored group). Aside from the woodsy theme, no wood was used in these pretty plates.

This. The fudge was too rich for my blood, but the light chocolate… I believe it was more of a flan than a mousse, but quite a dense little number. As it was early, I polished off the entire thing.

One of my favorite plates of the evening (also from Heather) was also one of the simplest. Chocolate bread, a schmear of ricotta, and honey, sweet but not too sweet, just meltingly good, a trio of fresh, perfect ingredients.

Ron Paprocki, Executive Pastry Chef at Gordon Ramsay at The London in New York, came up with another highlight of the evening: a Valrhona caramel-chocolate mousse, with chocolate sable, milk jam, and on the side, quark ice cream. I never heard of “quark” outside of a physics lecture hall, but rest assured its lemony flavor paired beautifully with the rest of the chocolate. The base was a bit too dense for the plastic spoon, but there was so much chocolate, including crumbly bits everywhere, that it didn’t matter.

You can’t go wrong with strawberries in several forms, especially in season. The puree on top of this dessert was just perfectly rich.

Obligatory closeups of more of Sylvain Leroy’s creations. I had to draw the line somewhere, so I only tried about half of the treats laid out here. The blueberry-themed one was a definite hit with the crowds, certainly.

I want to say this was a Yoni Morales creation. Essentially a capuccino, caramel cake, very tiramisulike, with a white chocolate panel on the outside, this delivered. Deceptively rich, with a great balance between the coffee flavors and the sweetness of the caramel and white chocolate.

This is a mojito from Yoni. The little pile of ice was made with rum (or at least the flavors of rum), and the pineapple, citrus, tropical fruits galore in so many different textures, just tasted wonderful and refreshing. I was a big fan of this. Too bad he works as an Executive Pastry Chef at the Ark Las Vegas Restaurant Corp. and not around New York.

Jerome Landrieu, Pastry Chef/Director at the Barry Callebaut Chocolate Academy in Chicago, came up with these little crunchy chocolate cones. How lovely! But inside…

Passion fruit! This was another favorite, and I couldn’t help but eat two, they were so deliciously sweet without being overbearing, with a nice crunch to balance.

Jean-Francois Suteau, from the Beverly Hills Hotel, created a ton of visually-striking but rather large desserts; I opted for smaller, chewier bites like the marshmallow (which also seemed to be in the Lipstick on a Pig) and these dark-chocolate discs with what seemed to be toffee splinters. Very cool, simple treats.

Remember the Black Forest Pops? Inside they were pretty cool, too, with a marshmallowy white sugary goo as a sort of frosting to the cake and its cherry layer. These were waaay too big, but I still managed to polish off one without going into sugar shock.

I decided to return to the Guittard room with a Lipstick on a Pig. After partaking of a decent lambrusco and a decent riesling, I figured I’d also have a decent port, Warre’s Otima 10 Year. Not to be — the stuff was overly boozy, even though it was only 40 proof, and just terrible. The dish cut the alcohol fumes reasonably well, and I enjoyed the components of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a different setup.

Macarons! I sorta like macarons, so I parked here for a little bit. The cherry were really rich – I can’t recall having one of these, or the tasty orange macaron, before, but I was impressed with how well the fruits were represented.

I finished my grazing with a bang, saving one of the most involved desserts for last. Antonio Bachour’s other creation? It starts with a rich, wonderful panna cotta (you can see the vanilla bean dotting the top), and is complemented by peach sorbet, morello cherry and peach “pearls” — those gel orbs, chewy and packed with flavor — and a thin sheet of sugar (the flower is real, and not tasty). This was a perfect cap to the evening. Or so I thought, until I was directed to…

The Godiva room, which it seemed most people had forgotten to visit. Truffles of many types were laid out, and while yeah, it’s Godiva, and these weren’t the ice-cream truffles, there were lots of interesting flavors, and we were encouraged to take a few home. So the mint chocolate, rocky road, a good old-fashioned chocolate truffle, and a couple others were packed into a little Godiva container and headed to my apartment.

I’m happy to have had the opportunity to attend the event this year. ICE and Dessert Professional impressed me with how the crowds were handled, and while it was a bit cramped, they did everything they could to accommodate the number of guests. I was more than happy to have the chefs prove to me why they were selected for the honor, and though I probably overindulged, I can honestly say there were no clunkers in the lot. Many thanks to all, and hope to see you again next year!

Please note that though I attended this event courtesy of Dessert Professional and their PR, I was under no obligation to post about this, positively or negatively, nor did I receive monetary compensation to do so. This is my opinion, you are free to take from it as you will.

Filed Under: Feisty Fun, The Beer Boor Tagged With: chocolate, dessert, Macaron, press event

« Thai Son
Uncle Jack’s Steakhouse »

Comments

  1. CT says

    June 20, 2011 at 2:29 pm

    Wow… looks like an extraordinary dessert-feast!

    Reply
  2. Feisty Foodie says

    June 20, 2011 at 2:47 pm

    What is that big ball of red on the panna cotta?

    I think I’d be sick if I ate even 1/2 of what you did. I think I made the right choice for my stomach. But I am jealous – some of those plates look right up my alley!

    Reply
    • BeerBoor says

      June 20, 2011 at 5:38 pm

      Is white chocolate, and I forgot to mention that. A solid ball of white chocolate.

      I really ate a lot. I couldn’t bring myself to throw out half-eaten desserts. It seemed like a slap in the face to the chefs!

      Reply
  3. T.C. says

    June 20, 2011 at 3:06 pm

    Holy crap, if only I got invited to such things…eat ’em out of hosue and home. ;P

    Reply
  4. Hungry says

    June 20, 2011 at 3:55 pm

    Oooh looks really good. Though, I’d probably would need a bag of potato chips on the side to counteract all that sugar.

    Reply
    • BeerBoor says

      June 20, 2011 at 5:39 pm

      I thought about that, and realized nothing else was going to fit in my belly that evening. So full of sweets, my teeth ached. They ache now, just thinking about it!

      Reply
  5. Jenn says

    June 20, 2011 at 4:59 pm

    oh my gosh. I think my heart just stopped reading that post. A Godiva room?! And all those sweets. It’s posts like these that make me realize I totally live in the wrong town.

    Instead, I will live vicariously. Awesome event coverage.

    Reply
  6. Niko says

    June 20, 2011 at 9:25 pm

    Nice write up! Great selection of pics with details too.

    Reply
  7. chakrateeze says

    June 20, 2011 at 11:15 pm

    I’m shocked that the port didn’t pair well with the strawberries and chocolate. To me, they are usually a perfect match.

    btw, awesome pics and reporting, Beer. You seriously did the chef’s artistic offerings justice.

    Tracie

    Reply
    • BeerBoor says

      June 21, 2011 at 11:35 am

      That’s the thing — of course the port SHOULD have paired well with the strawberries, but it was terrible port. As I mentioned the dessert helped mitigate the unpleasantness, at least.

      It’s really a no-brainer pairing, but of course you get the wines that sponsor the event.

      Reply
  8. Maiken says

    June 20, 2011 at 11:51 pm

    I tip my hat to you for eating all of these desserts. While the photos look great and I would really love to try all of these creations, it would most likely take me a week to eat through this amount of sweets…

    Reply
    • BeerBoor says

      June 21, 2011 at 11:35 am

      I’m not entirely certain I should have eaten all that I ate, but I regret nothing! Thank you.

      Reply
  9. jay says

    June 21, 2011 at 4:35 am

    The mojito looks fab. Due to a nut allergy I dont eat dessert out often, but that looks super, and safe.

    Reply
  10. SugarButter says

    June 23, 2011 at 4:14 am

    WHYYYY DIDN’T THEY HAVE MACARONS LAST YEAR?! I feel so cheated! Also, I’m crying because I want that passion fruit cone.

    Nice write-up, Boor!

    Reply
  11. LKPNYC says

    June 23, 2011 at 9:39 am

    This looks AMAZING. CHOMP!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • Holiday Gift Guide 2020
  • Easy Ways to Ease into Becoming an Eco-Friendly Household
  • It’s been a while!
  • Top 5 Luxury Hotels in New York City
  • New York Baby Show 2019 – TICKET GIVEAWAY!
  • Taste of Citi Field: A Guide to Game Day Eats 2019

Recent Comments

  • Stephanie on Easy Ways to Ease into Becoming an Eco-Friendly Household
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2020 — The Feisty Foodie on Holiday Gift Ideas
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2020 — The Feisty Foodie on Nesting Like a Mother – Slow Cookin’ Up a Storm (Mostly)
  • Lisa on It’s been a while!
  • zizi on Banh Mi Cart
  • Feisty Foodie on It’s been a while!
  • Xerlic on It’s been a while!
  • Daniel on Hop Kee

Tags

365 Bakeries banh mi BBQ Beef beer Blackboard Eats Breakfast Brunch Burgers Chicken Chinese cocktails contest dessert Desserts DLS drinks dumplings Feisty Bento feisty family fried chicken fries giveaway Ice cream Michelin stars noodles One Pot Meals Pasta Pizza Pork press event Ramen Recipe Fridays salad sandwiches Sauces Seafood Steak Sushi tacos trucks/carts TT Vegetarian wings

Copyright © 2023 · Foodie Pro Theme by Shay Bocks · Built on the Genesis Framework · Powered by WordPress