Pratt Grad Industrial Design just did chocolates at the end of the semester....
2
The "whimsical" circles on Jansen Chan's chocolate cake are not concentric, because they do not share a comment center point. In fact, if seen head-on, or projected onto a common surface, they still wouldn't be concentric. You left-brain folks are so peculiar...
1
This is not at all a NEW school of pastry making! Marie Antoine Carême, the most famous and influencial of French pastry chefs was the first to derive and struture his incredible "pieces montées" from ancient architectural designs in the early 1800's !
He was also a prolific author of cookery and pastry books. His pastry designs were all very elaborate and intricate in detail.
He even published two books for urban architectural projets, one for Saint Petersbourg, Russia and the other for Paris.
Modern French pastry chefs also are artisically influenced by geometric shapes.
Cédric Grolet's spherical creations of fruits are beautiful masterpieces that are so realistic, they defy reality!
1
...so, which architecture schools did they attend?
1
Ohhh, yummy photography, too!
Especially "Ms. Kasko’s viral creations: a berry-almond tart with a mazelike surface, constructed with a mold made by a 3D printer."
A 3D printer in the kitchen? Now, there's a unique Christmas gift!
4
The study of architecture is the best training for doing anything, (except possibly architecture).
Sounds pithy I know, but think about.
Architectural practice demands synthesizing information in several syntaxes: Aesthetics, mathematics, psychology, sociology, history, law...
And what are the products of these syntheses? Not buildings, PLANS. Architects don't make buildings.
They make sets of instructions, for other people to make buildings.
By comparison, a cake is a 'cake-walk.'
2
Ok. It looks very fancy and "architectural". What if I'm more concerned with how something tastes, instead of how it might look on Instagram?
I get the feeling that this is all about how those with lots of money can distance themselves from us peasants.
8
I love fine pastries --their beauty and their rush of flavor. I love a bit of flair in presentation. But in the end, what we most need from food is comfort, not drama. The trends described in this article seem to overthink a genre of food and eating experience that should be less pretentious and less engineered. I find most of these desserts unappetizing and clinical, and slightly offensive when so many people in the world do not have enough food to remain healthy.
4
As long as it tastes good I don't care how it looks like. All these fancy presentations are cool but very time-consuming. I'll keep them for special occasions only.
2
First, ALL FOOD should be beautiful and appealing. First you eat with your eyes then you taste with your tongue.
It's ridiculous to assume, as so many of the commenters seem to be doing here, that these beautiful creations don't taste as good as they look.
Second, Elizabeth Faulkner was creating scrumptious architectural cakes 20 years ago in San Francisco and I was surprised to find her name missing from this piece.
2
Much of the food we're used to is also beautiful, and that developed over decades or centuries, and looked frou-frou at some point, no doubt. "Mabel, what's this silly white foamy stuff you've plunked down on the top of my pumpkin pie?" At some point, what we think is a simple apple pie may have appeared silly to someone who just wanted a good, juicy apple straight off the tree.
Thanks for this article. I'd love to see more photos! I'd also love to get tastes of all of them. Thanks, Chefs, for continuing to expand your delicious field of work. I'm glad to see several female chefs excelling at this new thing.
2
The link between architecture and pastry making goes back to the late middle ages in Europe, when chefs would create elaborate pastry and marchpane (marzipan)”subtleties” for the high table. Popular themes were ships and castles.
“One of the earliest uses for the paste was in subtleties. When they had been sufficiently applauded they were dismantled and eaten. In the fifteenth century a marchpane began to emerge as a sweet in its own right”
By the sixteenth century, creations became more elaborate and were often gilded
5
This kind of food...made with so much stress for the sake of precision, looks just that! pretty but stressful! I would much rather see an imperfectly shaped pastry that gives a warm feeling.
6
This is welcome news.
It's heartbreaking to see how many restaurants in all economic strata are reducing costs by cutting out the Pastry Chef and substituting ice cream concoctions instead. At a recent visit to an upscale seafood restaurant, when I enquired which of the desserts was non-dairy, the answer was "None. Everything comes with ice cream." I'm tired of ice cream.
I look forward to finding some of these delectables soon, and hope it's the beginning of a long-lasting trend.
3
Former architect here.
I applaud the idea of food as a conceptual medium, but these desserts don't go nearly far enough. If these chefs want to be relevant to anyone besides themselves, their peers and a handful of lucky dinner guests, they should search for creative opportunities in all aspects of food and its related culture.
There have to be new business models to be made, new sustainable supply chains to explore, new ways of relating to living systems or the soil, new ways to connect socially around food, new utensils or environments or lighting, new ideas about trade or exchange (sing for your supper?), new ways to help people who need it, new ideas about nourishment, models of satisfaction without refined sugar... etc. etc.
Food is shockingly untapped as an artistic/political/psychological/conceptual medium and these folks are obviously capable. I hope they will expand their range.
2
"they found baking a cake a lot more interesting than designing a building" says the article. Actually what turns people away from architecture is that design is only a small part of the architecture process. Most of it is tedium and drudgery, along with low pay and long hours. Just a small percentage of architects get to do interesting design work. It's only in school that you can let your imagination fly. When you get out it's a rude awakening.
8
I really love to cook always new food. So i tried to make use of new recipes. Always love to create new. But always try to make tasty and good that stisfy everyone.Hope this is also good.
At last it needs to taste good what a dessert is.
1
In the end, we all get our just desserts...one way or another.
2
Not appetizing at all, I don't get it. To me, this is for people who don't like to eat, but want a show. When a dessert construction becomes overwrought, it is no longer fun--it kills the creativity and become a math problem. Overworked dessert ingredients are not yummy.
7
@Lolly Wills Maybe these deserts taste good as well as being showy?
2
I love to go to restaurants and have a full meal with an appetiser and desert - these are the things which I don't normally manage at home.
Therefore, when my son wished for a cake from Dinara Kasko (her work was featured on a kid's tv show here in Germany) for his 8th birthday, I was intrigued. I dutifully ordered the mould and the recipe from her website in the Ukraine. The recipe came; the mould was delayed. However, I improvised and after a lengthy shopping and cooking process, we ate a DELICIOUS chocolate mousse cake, with a layer of crumble and 3 different types of mousse. It was a great experience for my son and me. I bake a lot of homey cakes, from recipes both American and German but to try to do something so over the top was a great challenge. So yes, food can look good and taste good, even when complicated!
6
The apple strudel and the key lime desserts look great and probably taste great. The chocolate concoctions look pretty but as someone else said, do they taste good? And too much touching as another person said.
In the end it needs to taste good and satisfy my desire to be comforted, that's what a dessert is.
2
I love food. I love to cook. I love to create. I love intricate recipes that produce ethereal results, but when I read some of these pieces I feel like I'm living in the Captiol in the Hunger Games.
We have children in our own country that go to bed hungry every night and we spend time on things like this. I think it's because it's about food. It just upsets me to see so many talented people spending their lives sculpting food for the ultra elite.
Believe me, I understand. It's a creative endeavor. It's like art or music or poetry. But because it's food it just... upsets me.
Beautiful things. I appreciate the time and creativity.
I just can't go near them myself.
13
@mj Well, there are as well artists who make posters exhorting workers to be more productive.
Amen,those desserts helped move the point of few from the fanciful constructions of the 1980’s,and have influenced restaurant desserts for the past 20 years. The publisher of ‘The Last Course’, Fleming’s book, would do a great service to the cooking world by issuing a second printing.
1
Careme would have loved these desserts. We can have homey desserts when they suit us, and impressively creative architectural ones on other occasions. Let's celebrate both.
4
As a retired architect of some success, a pretty good and enthusiastic home baker and a throughly successful Pâtisserie patron, I feel completely qualified to comment on this article. People championing home style baking over these efforts are missing the point, in my mind. It reminds me of a relative years ago, having been taken to a very nice, but not particularly fussy restaurant proceeded to have a meltdown because there were no English Muffins at hand. We all love Apple Crisp, especially mine, but seriously folks...would it hurt get up off the sofa, put down the cheese doodles and enjoy some creative fun. It’s always useful to see how astonishing people can take a strudel, a car, a special violet or I just read about a man who makes handmade saws. It’s a big mistake, I think to deny oneself a treat over the vague and falsely directed desire to oppose Elitism.
20
@JLxx5 Having worked in urban commercial real estate and development for many years, I know how persuasive architects can be when it comes to urging folks to appreciate fine products, materials and craftsmanship. Maybe you haven't actually retired...you are just helping people blow budgets on a much smaller scale.
1
I dated a New York Police detective when I lived in the city and whenever we went out to eat, he would always encourage me to eat dessert as it's part of the dining experience.
2
From an interview by Terry Gross with Julia Child 1989:
Ms. CHILD: Well, nouvelle cuisine is through, I think. But I think it has been very useful in that it released people from a straitjacket, then we've gone into silly seasons and so forth. But one thing that was very useful was of paying attention to how the food looks on the plate, to make it really attractive. Then I think that gets exaggerated, so something looks like Japanese flower garden and the food looks fingered, which is not attractive. I think food should look like food, but it should be very appetizingly arranged.
GROSS: When you say food looks fingered, what do you mean?
Ms. CHILD: That means you'd taken your thumb and sort of wet your thumb and put these little things all around the plate in the shape of petals and so forth.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. CHILD: And it's - I don't find that attractive, because you know that they have been probably licking their fingers and putting it on the plate.
9
I want to eat these.
2
Yeah but how does it TASTE?
6
more photos please!!!
4
It's interesting that the reviewer has nothing to say about how these things taste.
5
Rosebud is not in Boston. Its in Somerville. Somerville is not Boston.
5
Any construction is eventually doomed to be demolished. So if your pie was made to look like a truss or some such? Just hand me that there fork, podner, and we'll see it to its final fate.
1
I am wondering if any of these chefs took inspiration from the Baroque architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini who famously designed table settings and centerpieces out of sugar when Queen Christina of Sweden came to Rome in the 17th century.
1
And the prices for these mini-Guggenheims? (If you have to ask, you probably can't afford these sugary sculptures.)
4
LOL! I don't know what this is - "a thick band of pastry, no errant raisins or drips of sugary apple juice" - but certainly no apple strudel. Whereas "thin, delicate pastry, rising in a crinkled, cylindrical whirl" sounds very much like a REAL apple strudel like you get in Austria (though of course in different size).
"Form over substance". That might be the epitaph for the first twenty years of our new Millennium. Do I sound depressed? Nothing a handcut artisinal donut can't fix.
1
All those fancy cake monstrosities you see on Cake Boss are mostly made from Rice Krispie Squares. Great if you're ten years old.
6
And those cakes are covered in fondant, which even a ten year old will reject, because it tastes awful.
7
“A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean."
-Will Durant
3
So very, very precious!
And such a valueless waste!
4
Well, lousy, egocentric architects build buildings that are more sculpture than comfortable environments for human beings to inhabit, and lousy, egocentric pastry chefs create desserts that are hard work to eat.
4
@Rachel Kreier The proof is in the taste! When man do pastry it's called architecture. When women do the same thing it's called baking.
I can certainly appreciate the skill involved for these pastry chefs to execute the complex desserts that they make. But I learned my baking / pastry skills in another camp. I apprenticed under Claudia Fleming when she was the pastry chef as Gramercy Tavern and the thing that jazzed me was her vision of the simple execution of desserts that focused on Flavor with a capital F. She didn't spend a lot of effort in creating over the top plated dessert presentations but I can tell you the flavors and textures of the desserts that she designed were spot on! I own my own bakery / cafe now and I have to say she was a big influence in how I create my desserts. Simple but flavor forward is my mantra.
18
Wasn't there a 19th century French chef--Careme?--who said that all architecture is a form of confectionery?
3
@mg
The actual,unforgettable, quote from Carem is:
“The Fine Arts are five in number: Painting, Music, Poetry, Sculpture, and Architecture--whereof the principle branch is Confectionery.”
It is said that the best art combines form and function: music, most purely. As Yeats said, "How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
A cherry pie does this: bright red inside amid flaky dough, what you see and smell previews the texture and taste you will eat.
I admire the skill and creativity of these inspired chefs, but their desserts seem to emphasize form over function.
6
But no mention of the joy and delight of a perfectly done apple crisp.
9
These beautiful works of art look like they belong in the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Guggenheim rather than on a dinner plate, served with a fine cup of Cappuccino or Expresso. I think they're just too darn pretty to eat.
4
Richard leach was the pioneer of architectural deserts at Aureole and Park Avenue Cafe and should be recognized.
4
@neil Murphy
And no mention of the extraordinary work of Elizabeth Faulkner. Her work was exquisite and delicious. Best chocolate cake I ever had!! Almost 20 years ago.
1
These pastries, while interesting to look at, don't look like something I would want to eat. The best desserts, to me, don't look as if they will shatter or resist when you put a fork into them.
7
Kudos to all the creators of "Brave New World of dessert".
What could be more inspiring than to dig into a Chocolate White House, a Ginger-house Capitol wit6h whipped cream, or an Eiffel Tower made of sugared fruit.
2
Whenever I find myself in front of one of these architectural marvels, I worry that my first attempt to cut off a bite will fling some of it to another table. I have enough to worry about without adding the fear of starting an accidental launch.
7
All that should matter is they are good to eat. Nothing else.
12
Visual elements have been a part of fine dining since the first gourmet restaurant opened. Fine food is an art designed to excite all the senses, not just the palate. I can't for the life of my understand why so many people seem so angry or so desperate to declare themselves unimpressed by these fascinating and beautiful pieces of pastry. Architecture is an exciting new element to bring to the dessert table! Cheers to the chefs.
18
First it was the weird overly designed, formed and colored cakes that don't even look edible. Now this. Too much. I'll just take the simple flan or tart, thanks.
16
I am a Southern Girl; from the heart land of Texas. A good dessert to me was a bowl of warm peach or cherry cobbler and a couple scoops of Blue Bell's ice cream flavor Buttered Pecan. Now I live in France.
It took a decade but now I am changed. I discovered I need only 3, ok, sometimes 5 bites of anything before I become disengaged. Now, when I go to the USA to visit family and receive a half of an over stuffed pizza I marvel at the size. I feel like I am home again! Yet just 3 or 4 bites later I find that I've lost interest. So what has changed?
Well, I am older. But I also have a better trained palate now. Why and how so? Because I am a more traveled person. I appreciate the time taken between bites. All I know is that Lisa Lu's Lime Tart is so very tempting. There's a local bakery here, an off shoot of a 2 star chef, that sells a small 3-inch diameter pear/almond tart. It is not always there, and it is not made in volume. Perhaps 10 or 20 are made when the pears are just perfect? I don't know. What I do know is one must be there when they arrive in the pastry case.
Yes, the eye invites the palate to a whalz. What a surprise then, to discover a dish that is the Tango!
9
@Susannah Allanic Susannah your comment is outrageously funny!
What a delight to read!
Such creativity. Beauty. Surprises!
Thank you, Times, for stories like this - to mitigate the disaster we’re living through in polictics.
10
These professionals have worked very hard on their science and art for our enjoyment. Can we just enjoy and appreciate?
8
Yes, they've worked hard and we should appreciate that. But what they've worked at is the visual presentation of food. That's fine, but I personally feel a disconnect between my taste buds and the presentation. It just doesn't LOOK like something I want to eat. Can't help it, but there it is.
5
Ms. Haible - I concur wholeheartedly with your comment. These desserts are a beautiful and spectacular visual presentation of food but I too feel a disconnect between my taste buds and the desserts illustrated. Your comment nicely sums up the gist of what many others have also stated. Nicely done.
3
@Amy Haible I tend to agree with you the aesthetic pleasure is inadvertently dominating the eating. I speak as an artist.
Ah, but the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. If it tastes fabulous, then I almost don't care what it looks like.
8
While these various pastry desserts are incredibly artistic and true works of imagination and skill, they seem too extreme to simply enjoy as a dessert. I want to be more moved and wowed by taste, texture and combinations of flavors than by unique displays of design.
The first question I would ask myself if I were served the apple strudel, pistachio cake with raspberry mousse, the berry-almond tart with a mazelike surface or the chocolate cake is "does this taste as rich and delicious as it looks?"
Fantastic article and beautiful photography. It just seems these pastry chefs went over the bend . . . just a bit, and tried too hard to impress.
10
Is trying "too hard to impress" one's customers a bad thing? I wish more proprietors were like them!
2
You are correct Mr. Bachmann, proprietors should demand the best from their chefs. Perhaps my choice of words was not the best. My only point was I care more about how a dessert tastes than how it looks.
1
One can trace this impulse to the father of modern cuisine and decorative pastry constructions, Marie-Antoine Careme. Orphaned and self taught, he studied architectural drawings at the Bibliotheque Nationale for inspiration and created what became known as 'pieces montee' which were sometimes several feet high and modeled after temples, pyramids, and ancient ruins.
4
When I was in architecture school I made a model of Jefferson's University of Virginia campus with rice krispie-marshmallow treats. Very good building material-- lightweight, strong, adhesive. Worked well for the dome and undulating brick walls. Eaten right after the slide show.
38
This is architecture to love!
I’m thrilled to see this approach to pastry, I.e, taking into account all aspects of design, texture, presentation and of course ( hopefully ) taste.
I started out as an asst. pastry chef too many years ago,due to both my love of great desserts and my love of sculpture. Trained classically, quality ingredients were of utmost importance. Unfortunately, doing this type of work in the 1980’s was a little ahead of the trend - typical for me!
Fell out of love with the restaurant business that too frequently had a disconnect between the dinner menu & the desserts. So glad that the awful “cake art” that has passed as pastry, might finally be behind us.
6
I'm amazed and delighted by these confections: I think their visual impact adds a great deal to dessert--a course intended to be a pleasing treat. It takes no special talent, just practice and fresh, quality ingredients to make a very good chocolate cake or apple pie. Those who wish to "keep it simple" may do so; I say hooray for those who want to do more and dazzle--by all means do so!
15
We feast first with our eyes. These are gorgeous works of art.
I hope these beautiful creations also are delectable.
20
This article illustrates several notable characteristics of architects and architecture:
- that architects truly believe their methodologies can be applied to any issue, always (in their mind) improving it
- that most architects understand their discipline to be first and foremost an exercise in form-making, not experience
- that, in the end, architecture - and design - is best at producing non-essential nick-naks that no one truly needs (think of the MoMa gift shop)
5
Gross generalizations about architects. Architecture and design are everywhere, from the chair you sit on, the house/apartment/etc you live in...
"non-essential nick-naks that no one truly needs...?" Ridiculous.
2
Case in point: the Helmut Jahn State of Illinois building ~ an ostentatious public building with nothing functional or comfortable for people.
We architects really lost something when we had to switch from hand drafting to computers, that's for sure. Finding creative outlets for all the things computers have stripped away is always frustrating.
20
Yea, we lost the ability to stall, forestall, and compensate for being behind schedule. We lost the ability to charge higher fees, because we employed more people. You didn't have to "switch" per se. You can still draft with pencil if you'd like but good luck competing that way these days.
Computers haven't stripped away anything. That's like claiming automobiles stripped away the ability to enjoy the landscape that only a horse-pulled cart provideed. People have learned to think and approach "the problem," if you will, differently. Computers are merely a tool for precision. You learned with a set of tools. Today we're using different approaches, different ways of thinking (and I'm not talking about archibabble and philosophical nonsense), and utilizing different tools.
That said, like regurgitating pretentious architecture, these empty calories may be presented in new and interesting ways. But that's all this is, presentation. And emptiness.
1
I feel like the writer has lumped in chefs who are using their achitecural techniques in an attempt to improve the dessert with those chefs who are primarily looking for a visual impact. There's a distinction that hasn't really been emphasized in the piece.
13
I am a baker for a small catering company here in Denver, and what we have found is, that less is really more. The more complicated something becomes the less flavor is represented. I believe their is room for all kinds of beauty, flair and construction in my desserts but we have a saying we try to stick to, and that is
"Keep It Simple" and really most people like it that way.
41
I feel like this dessert gets touched too much before I eat it.
59
Not just desserts.
While the dishes most high-end chefs prepare look really nice, watching them touch every item of food on my plate leaves me a bit nauseated. It's a growing trend of carefully configuring (manhandling) every leaf, every rice kernel, in a very specific place on the plate. Not needed. Don't want it.
22
Even in my home kitchen, dessert making with uncooked eggs,cream,caramel, chocolate ,sugar, to making sushi, I use inexpensive nitrile gloves-whether I am making something for the two of us,or for friends.
There were way too many bare hands handling the desserts shown in this article.
In a hospital setting hand hygiene is still problematic ,with rates between 45-80%. (https://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/18/hh_monograph.pdf). I seriously doubt that restaurant kitchen workers reach 40%. For culinary workers- 24% to 52% practice some type of hand washing prior to handling food. (https://www.foodsafetymagazine.com/magazine-archive1/februarymarch-2011/... )
What's that I taste? Bare hands of strangers..gross!
6
Yes, I do the same - I wear gloves. When I see food being prepared requiring lots of touching - I am totally grossed out and wouldn't dream of eating any. Kneading bread? Ugh, how many skin cells have sloughed off? Nitrile gloves are well worth the price.
2
More emperor's new clothes, like "molecular gastronomy" before it. I don't want my plate to fight back with sharp edges or ooze foam like the swirl around the shower drain. I've been to expensive dinners meant to wow, and these dishes are invariably disappointing in taste and texture. They are also depressing reminders of how far from genuine hunger and nourishment we have to go in order to be this decadent.
55
When will food just be food and the work of "art" will be how it tastes?
Most of the most memorable food I've had were simple but filled and designed from love.
27
There is room for both. As a home cook, naturally I cook pretty simple stuff -- but I like to make a nice presentation. If I can make an even nicer presentation (without losing flavor) so much the better.
1
At our local place for desserts the fancy cakes are very beautiful and tempting but I have learned that they never taste as good as the simple fresh ginger cake. I think this is true of many things in life, not just desserts.
42
We can talk about pastry chefs like they matter, but the reality is only a small percentage of restaurants can afford them. Even fewer of this caliber. Sure, it's beautiful and interesting, but given the economic impracticality of desserts in contemporary restaurants it's all just a bit self-indulgent and perhaps nothing more than Instagram PR.
22
Every good restaurant should ideally have a pastry chef. Their absence detracts from the meal as a whole. There's no worse way to end a meal than an 'after thought' dessert concocted by some chef on the cuisine side.
14
Chefs are chemist basically and need to be aware of the unintended chemicals they may add to our food. Plasticizers are a major issue for food preparation and storage and, should not be ignored. When I see a chef use a squirt bottle full of oil I have to cringe and leave the establishment. I don't think phthalates (Plasticizers) are very safe in our food. One common phthalate is "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen" by our NIEHS. Unnatural food colorings can also be a danger.
Many of these dishes look great, but they need to be safe to eat, as I assume they will be eaten.
9
Being a very good cook and baker, I order food in restaurants that I won't or can't make myself - to that end, this sort of dessert fits that criterion. However, the taste has to be there, and I am so thoroughly sick of towers of X or Y with foam or ... I want good food that is not difficult to eat. The lime "marrow" or the strudel ring would fit that (if the taste is there), but dimension (height, towers) - who cares?
39
Sorry. Most of these desserts would be much improved if there were just a bit less going on.
30
. . . but do they taste good?
71
Surprised you didn't write about Cedric Grolet.