Getting To Know Christophe Michalak

Gourmandize

He’s the pastry chef of the 3-starred Plaza Athenee, and he’s best friends with other pastry heavyweights like Pierre Herme and Christophe Adam. But despite his fancy credentials, Michalak likes to consider himself the superhero of pastry -not because he has a big head, but because he’s obsessed with comic books.

He’s also obsessed with making highly original and extremely creative pastries and cakes. He changes the recipe every day so that a client could, theoretically, come in regularly and never eat the same thing twice. He’s also kind of quirky: he redesigned his packaging in order to make it more like a pizza box. Why? Because through trial and error he realized that’s the most convenient way to transport a cake when zipping through the city on a motorbike. He also measured the opening of his mouth to make sure that none of his cakes were too high to fit in with just one bite.

Luckily this quirkiness has translated seamlessly into the realm of pastry. His shop in Paris has become phenomenally successful and has skyrocketed him into celebrity chefdom. Michalak is the guy you want to visit if you’re in the City of Lights and are fed up of eating yet another chocolate croissant or macaron.

His pastries are sure to blow your socks off, just as any good superhero would.

10 things you should know about Christophe Michalak

1. For breakfast he eats: chocolate mousse. Every day. And then twice a year he goes on a diet, because who wouldn’t if they ate chocolate mousse every day!
2. His favorite childhood food memory: eating flan that his grandmother used to pick up from a bakery. He would literally eat dozens of them.
3. His favorite ingredient is: chocolate, because everything is better with chocolate.
4. The ingredient he hates is: cinnamon. You’ll never find any cinnamon in his kitchen.
5. He makes the best scones in the world.
6. When he’s alone he cooks: pasta. It’s a nod to his Italian roots.
7. If he hadn’t become a pastry chef, he would have become: an architect. Or a photographer. But most importantly, a superhero.
8. If he really could be a super-hero, his super-power would be: the ability to guess every customer’s favorite dessert.
9. The one thing he’ll never eat: insects.
10. While he could live without eating lunch or dinner, his life would end if he ever had to forego dessert.

Want more? Read our interviews with Pierre Herme the Macaron King and Christophe Adam the éclair revolutionary!

More steaming articles

Newly Vegan Interview with Clotilde Dusoulier from... What is Celiac Disease?

Chef Tips and Tricks