Her unconventional desserts are also said to be less than Instagram worthy, but she really could not care less
Her desserts are often not at all sweet and she couldn't care less if people complain they don't look great on Instagram. But that did not stop Jessica Prealpato from being named the best pastry chef on the planet on Tuesday by the World's 50 Best Restaurants ranking.
The 32-year-old French woman, who is about to have her first child, is the creator of a new genre of guilt-free patisserie. The subtle and sublime creations she turns out at the three-star Michelin restaurant of the Plaza Athenee hotel in Paris are a rebuff to the sugar-rush burn of food porn.
For Prealpato, it’s not about how a dessert looks, it's how it tastes—and the feelgood glow afterwards. Yet, even she has not dared to have her father—a patissier forged in full-on sugar worship of French tradition—taste her creations that match strawberries with pine shoots and lemon with seaweed.
"He would not understand what I do at all," she told AFP.
Prealpato has eschewed the sugar high for what her boss at the Plaza Athenee, French super-chef Alain Ducasse, calls "naturalité"—or naturalness—bringing out the full range of flavours an ingredient already has.
What Prealpato also does is use ingredients that would never normally make it onto a dessert trolley. So, you have malted beer sorbet with barley crumble and hop galettes, cherry olive vinaigrette or vanilla Jerusalem artichokes with truffles.
(Related: If Banksy Were A Pastry, What Would He Be?)