French restaurant pastry chef named 'world’s best'

The 32-year-old Cédric Grolet - chef patissier (head pastry chef) at the luxury five-star Le Meurice hotel in Paris, and who already won “Best Patissier (best pastry chef overall)” in 2015 - has now won the restaurant title too, as reported by French news source 20 Minutes.

Grolet triumphed after managing to impress a formidable jury, which included the highly-respected French chefs Pierre Hermé and Jean-François Piège.

The chef was evidently extremely proud of his prize, posting a sunny photograph of his newly-won trophy on social networking site Twitter.

Grolet first became the “chef patissier” (head pastry chef) at Le Meurice five years’ ago, aged just 27.

He has become well-known for his skills not just in the professional chef world, but also to the public, through his participation in the US reality TV show Top Chef, and the popularity of his eye-catching pastry creations on his Instagram account.

Grolet is well-known for his speciality in creating “trompe-l’oeil” (trick/optical illusion) cakes and sweets that appear to be whole fruits, but upon closer inspection or eating, show themselves to be made of something else entirely.