Worlds Best 50 chefs


Dominique Ansel of Dominique Ansel Bakery, New York, Tokyo, London
(The World’s Best Pastry Chef 2017)

“We’ve just opened a brand new shop in Tokyo in March at Ginza Mitsukoshi, and 50 per cent of the menu is all-new creations that aren’t available anywhere else. They’re each inspired by Japan and Japanese ingredients, and one of my favourites is our Square Watermelon Cake, with raspberry and pistachio mousse, pistachio feuilletine and watermelon lime gelée. We also created a Zero Gravity Chiffon Cake that’s so light, it floats inside a balloon. You have to pop the balloon to get the cake – it’s really fun.

And coming up in the Fall, we will be opening our first restaurant ever in Los Angeles at The Grove. It’s something I’ve never done before – creating a restaurant with full savoury menus, brunch, a bar programme with cocktails – so it’s really exciting for me and for the team to see if all start coming to life.

In terms of the next trend in desserts, I think that you’ll start to see a lot of savoury chefs head towards desserts and sweets, and vice versa as well, pastry chefs exploring the savoury side of things. There’s endless possibilities in what you can create if you put imagination and technique into it, whether you’re a savoury or a pastry chef, and you’ll start to see those lines blurring more and more.”

Gaggan Anand, Gaggan, Bangkok, Thailand
(No. 7, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2017, and The Best Restaurant in Asia)

“The fizz and energy in me is running out. I’m tired, that’s why I’m closing Gaggan (in 2020) and moving to Japan. I finally convinced Goh (Chef Takeshi Fukyuma of La Maison de la Nature Goh in Fukuoka), a famous Japanese chef to quit his restaurant, and I’m quitting my restaurant. And together we form a restaurant that has just 12 seats in Fukuoka. We’ve been planning this for three years. We won’t be doing any menus. We are going back to good food, and we are not going to cook superficial food. We are living and working full time there. Can you imagine how mad we are? This is a change of career. Nobody else will take this risk with me. And he’s agreed to it. Our restaurant will be called GohGan.”

Jordi Roca, El Celler De Can Roca, Girona, Spain
(No. 3, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2017)


“I’m currently working on a prototype that relates colours with musical notes. (Jordi is working with cyborg-artist Neil Harbisson who is colour-blind and has an antenna implanted in his skull. He can hear colours that we can’t see, such as ultra violet). I’m developing this ‘dish player’ with Neil, so you can hear the colours that you are eating. It’s an instrument that translates colours to sounds – it composes sounds in desserts. When I go back home (to Spain) I’m going to finish this prototype – in a couple of months it will be ready.”