You are what you eat
At Relais Desserts, every meal is more than just a meal. Every lunch, every dinner and every breakfast is entrusted to a different region, which shares its sensitivity, products and identity. The Italy region opened the festivities on Sunday evening. The Alps took over on Monday, with the added bonus of a visit from Victor Delpierre, World Barista and Cocktail Champion, who brought an unexpected dimension to the evening with his creations. The Loire Bretagne region distinguished itself at Tuesday’s lunch, and the Southwest region at dinner. Throughout these four days, the Provence region provided breakfasts each morning, meeting all expectations. These culinary experiences, carefully by establishments that put their reputation on the line, are perhaps what best illustrate what the association is all about: a community that never separates work from pleasure.
Six new establishments
Monday morning is traditionally the highlight of the seminar. Admissions take place one after the other, in a serious and supportive atmosphere, where each new member shows the buffet that represents them to their colleagues. It is, on the surface, a free exercise, yet extremely revealing: when you know that the finest craftsmen of their generation are watching you, you don’t choose your theme at random.
Lluc Crusellas Capdevila came from Barcelona with his elephant. This elephant has helped him to win the title of World’s Best Chocolatier as part of the 2022 World Chocolate Masters. This almost life-size, strikingly realistic chocolate elephant, surrounded by chocolate pods and flowers, was a way of showing his new colleagues: this is who I am, this is where I come from.
Diego Lozano, for his part, had decided to use a word for the title of his creation: “Fusão”. A Portuguese word meaning ‘fusion’. As the association’s first Brazilian member, he made a slender, white piece of art – a cobra and a yellow flower sculpted from chocolate – reflecting in a single image the dialogue between the Brazil from which he came and the France where he studied. It was both a declaration of belonging and a creative project.
Xavier Brignon took his colleagues into the forest. At the foot of a chocolate clock, whose mechanism was clearly visible, there were morels, mushrooms of all varieties, pine cones and bright red amanita mushrooms: an entire undergrowth, miniaturised and meticulously reproduced, which the pastry chef from Besançon has arranged as a showcase for his world.
Enzo Roussel immersed the jury into the depths of the sea. With organic-shaped chocolate corals, bluish sharks and deep-sea creatures, as the son of Christophe Roussel, based in La Baule, he chose to focus on the sea because it is right there, just outside, and has always inspired his way of seeing things.
Louis Agnellet paid tribute to his lake. He designed a spectacular buffet centred around the Annecy Lake Festival, featuring a chocolate pontoon and a sugar firework display that soared towards the ceiling. His work was both breathtakingly beautiful and touchingly sincere. As the son of Patrick Agnellet, his aim was not to create something exotic, but to express what matters most to him.
Niels De Rouw, from the Netherlands, has chosen the theme of Christmas. This was not just a theme, but an identity: the Maison de Rouw in Vught transforms its shop into a traditional Dutch festive setting every year, and this all-chocolate creation – with its façade inspired by a Dutch building, its station clock, its wooden horses and its festive figures – was a declaration of belonging to a home, to a family, and to a way of being an artisan.
Workshop day
On Monday afternoon, members were invited to choose from three workshops, which were organised in parallel. Cacao Barry offered an exploration of travel cakes, combining a detailed analysis of a growing market with a long-awaited technical session focusing on mastering the quatre-quarts cake and its different variations. Gaël Redouté’s presentation about digital manufacturing showed us what new technologies can actually bring to a craft workshop, with his usual candour and pragmatism. Élodie Rabillard, Quality Manager at Maison Guerlais, gave a presentation on hygiene control plans – a topic that is often feared, but which became accessible and useful thanks to her operational approach.
The ceremony to award jackets and plaques to the six new members concluded this first important day. Following this, Michel Belin, one of the association’s founding members, spoke about the origins of Relais Desserts. It was a special moment, the highlights of which we have republished at the end of this article.
Seminar and work
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the participants alternated between plenary sessions, regional presentations and external speakers, thereby creating a collective discussion about contemporary issues related to the profession.
Paul Filippi, Executive Pastry Chef at the Rungis laboratory of Maison Pierre Hermé Paris, started Tuesday morning with a session on pre-proofed viennoiserie, providing the technical framework for a discussion that the Belgium region followed up with a remarkable presentation on the evolution of viennoiserie towards coffee shops. Robotics in patisserie, as explored by the Grand Est region, stimulated the most active discussions. Presented with the Japan region’s usual precision, the art of dry petits fours reminded us that technique can never be separated from a cultural vision of taste. The Paris region organised sugary snacks tasting session, a format in full renewal in artisan display windows.
On Wednesday morning, Nora Berbery, from the Twily agency, talked about artificial intelligence and business productivity with a welcome pragmatism. Matfer Bourgeat introduced its latest innovations, and to mark the end of the event, the Spain region offered each member a discovery box of products, which many were already looking forward to opening.
The roots of Relais Desserts
Very few associations still know their own origins with such precision. During this seminar, Michel Belin, one of its founding members, took the time to go back to the sources and share a story that many did not know.
The story started in Lyon at the end of the 1960s, when Norbert Ferber and Jean Masson founded La Motte d’Or, an association of pastry chefs with a simple mission: To promote butter-based patisserie in a trade where margarine was still the dominant ingredient. In post-war France, barely 10% of pastry chefs worked with butter. There was a shortage of raw materials, the laboratories were rudimentary, and sharing recipes was still considered a sign of weakness. It was in this context that, in Paris in 1970, Jean Millet established the Association des Maîtres Pâtissiers de France. Gaston Lenôtre founded his school at the same time, shook up the industry, and said out loud what no one else dared to say: we must share, train together, and open our laboratories.
The two closely linked associations joined forces and brought together up to 120 members in 1974. Unfortunately, a purchasing cooperative incorporated into the structure caused tensions, and at the end of the 1970s, the organisation became shaky. Michel Belin and Lucien Pelletier then gathered some artisans on 28 July 1981, at Lucien’s home, in the Médoc. That day’s decision was simple and would remain unchanged: an association with no common financial interest, based on sharing and mutual requirements. Norbert Ferber designed the logo. Relais Desserts was born.
Forty-five years later, by welcoming six new Maisons from Brazil, the Netherlands, Spain and France, by discussing robotics and artificial intelligence, and by exchanging dishes from one region to another, the association continues to write the same story. The story of a community that has believed, since its origins, that together we can best promote quality.