Eleven women pastry chefs with soaring careers

On the occasion of March 8, International Women’s Day, we wanted to highlight the careers of eleven pastry chefs whom we follow closely and who have recently appeared in so good.. magazine. Women from all over the world who receive awards, who explore little-known ingredients, who are not afraid to be entrepreneurial, who are imitated due to their unique style, who care about the planet, who run schools, and write books.

Pía Salazar, best pastry chef in the world 2023

‘My desserts are daring because they are not conceived with the classic bases of a dessert’. This is how Pía Salazar refers to the sweet cuisine offered at the Nuema restaurant (Quito, Ecuador) in so good.. magazine 31, which has led her to be chosen Best Pastry Chef in Latin America 2022 and Best Pastry Chef in the World, according to The World’s 50 list Best Restaurants.

Salazar, who works with little-known products from the Ecuadorian pantry, has in mind opening her own restaurant and pastry shop.

Ksenia Penkina. An ambitious training project

Her name resonates internationally. Based in Vancouver (Canada), she is the promoter of the ambitious training project PastryClass.com, which offers intensive online courses given by pastry chefs of the stature of Ramon Morató, Yann Couvreur, Cédric Grolet, Frank Haasnoot, Johan Martin, and Gregory Doyen. Additionally, she has launched her own line of food coloring and published four books.

Penkina is very popular for her particular style of customizing glazes. As she states in so good.. magazine 30, ‘glazing is key, and depending on the type used, it can either improve the look of your cake and edible feel, or express your creativity.

Tejasvi Chandela. Great promoter of Indian pastry

At only 22 years old and after training in Paris, Tejasvi Chandela returned to her hometown of Jaipur to open Dzurt, the first pastry shop in this city of more than three million inhabitants. Currently, the chef has a second space dedicated to making bean to bar chocolates and she travels around the world to show to what extent the techniques and flavors of Indian mithai are compatible with modern European-style pastry.

Chandela assures in so good.. magazine 30 that being a female pastry chef in India is easy, “you will find more women than men running pastry shops. There is a huge wave of women entering the trade and really striving for excellence.”

Blanca de Noval. Opening paths in R&D

Gastronomy needs professionals who, beyond expressing proposals in a restaurant or a pastry shop, investigate and open new paths. These are qualities that straddle scientific rigor and the needs of the artisan sector. Along these lines we find Blanca del Noval, a versatile chef who for years has been a fundamental part of the BCulinaryLab, a research team at the Basque Culinary Center, located in San Sebastián (Spain). There she focused her attention on the use of edible wild plants, which ‘is not only a culinary issue, but also a cultural, identity, health, and biodiversity promotion issue’, she defends in so good.. magazine 30.

Blanca has just begun a new professional stage as a consultant and generator of gastronomic ideas and knowledge.

Mineko Kato. A better world

In 2018, FARO restaurant, on the 10th floor of the Tokyo Ginza Shiseido Building, underwent a transformation from serving authentic Italian cuisine to offering sustainable gastronomy, and Mineko Kato was assigned pastry chef.

According to her, the role of gastronomy goes beyond providing mere pleasure to the taste buds, its objective should be to stimulate the mind. ‘Food can play a crucial role in changing the world for the better in the coming years, creating a harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature’, she asserts in so good.. magazine 30.

Lauren V. Haas. Teaching vocation

She is a leading figure in pastry in the United States due to her solid teaching career in centers such as the International Baking & Pastry Institute at Johnson & Wales University, or as Barry-Callebaut’s gourmet Lead Chef for North America. She is currently a professor at the Culinary Institute of America.

A notable feature is her sensitivity towards nature as a source of inspiration and resources, and as a supreme asset that must be preserved. An interest in sustainability that led her to pursue a master’s degree in Sustainable Food Systems from Green Mountain College. Hence, in so good.. magazine 29 she stressed the need for ‘equipping the next generation of chefs with core sustainability competencies, which will have a long-lasting impact’.

Natsuko Shoji. Recognized in the sector

Voted Best Female Chef in Asia 2022 by 50th Best Restaurant and The Best Chef FoodArt Award 2022 by The Best Chef Awards, she is the owner of Été restaurant in Tokyo.

She applies sustainable practices in her establishment, since, as she warns in so good.. magazine 29, ‘the food industry and its surroundings are in danger. For the younger generation, they need a successful role model,’

Camila Garcia. Youth and bravery

After training in countries such as France, Spain, the United States, and more, she decided to open her own school in Chile, StudioPas Academy, which gathers more than 20,000 students between online and face-to-face courses. She is also the president of the Chilean National Pastry Selection, “La Roja Dulce”, which recently won the Pastry Cup America and with which she hopes to continue achieving success. ‘We are not Europe when it comes to pastry, we do not possess hundreds of years of history, but we are something new and we are growing’, she states in so good.. magazine 29.

Recently, this young chef has also claimed equality in a profession that has traditionally been dominated by men.

Jo Barrett. Multifaceted and concerned about the environment

At 34, Australian chef Jo Barrett runs her own restaurant, Little Picket, has written a book, publishes her own magazine, and has received an award for designing her own bakery knives.

This versatile chef states in so good.. magazine 29 that all of her activity is inspired by nature and she believes that ‘we can alter climate change by the way we eat and cook’. In her restaurant she only uses local ingredients, ‘we make everything in house; from breads, cheeses, charcuterie, pastry, and butchery. We also grow and pick a lot of our produce.”

Natalie Eng. Simple and elegant

Although she is very young, Singaporean pastry chef Natalie Eng has a long history in the dessert stations of top restaurants, from Le Meurice by Alain Ducasse, Sorrel in Singapore, or Le Pan and Batard in Hong Kong, where she currently lives and works as a pastry consultant. There she comes up with simple and classic proposals. As she explains in so good.. magazine 30, ‘the key to success in dessert is to keep things simple and elegant, understandable to the diner.’

Talia Profet. Returning cocoa powder to the top

Talia Profet began her career in some of New York’s great kitchens such as Balthazar and Daniel. There she laid the foundations of a way of understanding pastry that was mindful of “kitchen culture”, constantly learning techniques and maintaining discipline in all aspects of her work, starting with her own creativity. She later completed her training in Paris and came to know Asian cuisine more closely.

She is currently pastry chef at deZaan, where she explores the multiple possibilities of cocoa powder.  ‘Returning cocoa powder, a forgotten ingredient, to the top of the ingredient list creates an abundance of opportunities. Cocoa powder brings new, unexplored flavors, colors, and texture possibilities to the pastry and culinary world’, she states in so good.. magazine 31.