For four days only, two of the most influential modern names in French pastry are sharing a kitchen in SoHo, New York City.
As someone who first fell in love with France through its pâtisseries, painstakingly learning the difference between pastry dough types while studying French, I couldn’t resist spending the morning listening to two chefs whose work has helped shape my dessert choices the way they are today. Fittingly, the conversation unfolded over coffee and pastries.
To celebrate a limited-edition collaboration built around Valrhona chocolate, Chef Dominique Ansel welcomed Pierre Hermé—widely regarded as one of the architects of modern French pastry and the king of the macaron—to New York for a rare breakfast conversation. While guests gathered to sample three exclusive pastries, the two chefs reflected on the careers and moments that shaped them.
For Ansel, the collaboration is deeply personal. “I remember coming to Paris when I was 19 years old looking for a job,” he told the room. “All I could hear was Pierre Hermé’s name. I worked with his entire team, and all I heard was, ‘Pierre does it this way. Pierre likes it this way.’ I’ve always looked up to his work and his work ethic.”
Hermé returned the admiration just as warmly. “I admire his work,” he said. “I was surprised by the creativity, by the ideas he developed. He’s an example of one of the best pastry chefs in the world.”
It was a fitting exchange between two chefs whose work has helped define a generation of French pastry, one by revolutionizing the modern macaron, the other by creating New York’s most famous laminated pastry.
Pierre Hermé: A Pastry Revolutionary
Born into a family of Alsatian bakers and pastry chefs, Hermé knew almost instinctively that pastry would become his life. “At nine, I knew that I wanted to be a pastry chef,” he said. Five years later, he left home for Paris to apprentice at the legendary Lenôtre. His father walked him to the train station, but the rest of the journey was his own.
Hermé spent six years at Lenôtre, rotating through every department—from macarons and ice cream to viennoiserie and the ovens—building the technical precision that would later define his career. Ironically, the chef most closely associated with the modern macaron wasn’t initially fond of the pastry.
“My first task was making macarons,” he laughed. “At the time I didn’t love macarons because I found they had not enough taste.”
After working in restaurants and hotels, Hermé joined Fauchon at just 24 years old, leading a brigade of more than 30 pastry chefs. There, he began questioning tradition.
“I thought the pastry they made was not the pastry of today. It was the pastry of the past,” he says.
Over the next 11 years, he introduced new desserts and a more contemporary vision for French pâtisserie before launching his own company. His first boutique surprisingly opened in Japan before Paris, with his iconic Rue Bonaparte shop debuting in 2001.
Today, Pierre Hermé Paris counts more than 100 boutiques worldwide. Yet when Ansel asked what achievement makes him proudest, Hermé’s answer wasn’t global expansion, but rather, “the quality of the product.” Which he has indeed mastered.
An Ispahan Cronut Steals the Show
That pursuit of quality is exactly what brings Hermé and Ansel together. Available at Dominique Ansel Bakery through July 26, the capsule collection celebrates Valrhona, the iconic French chocolatier marking milestones for two of its most beloved couvertures. Rather than simply placing two famous names side by side, the collaboration merges each chef’s signature style through three limited-edition creations.
The undeniable star is the Ispahan Cronut, a meeting of two pastry icons. Ansel reimagines Hermé’s legendary Ispahan—a dessert famous for its unmistakable pairing of rose, raspberry, and lychee—inside his signature laminated pastry. The Cronut is filled with a silky lychee ganache made with Valrhona Opalys white chocolate and raspberry jam, before being glazed with rose fondant and finished with a fresh rose petal. It’s floral without tasting perfumed, brightened by raspberry, and surprisingly balanced.
The collaboration continues with Hermé’s Paradoxe Entremets, created to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Valrhona Guanaja 70% dark chocolate. Layers of buckwheat shortbread and praline, soft chocolate biscuit, Guanaja mousse, and shards of soy-and-fleur-de-sel chocolate create a dessert that plays with bitterness, salt, and deep cocoa intensity in every bite.
Rounding out the trio is the Flan Infiniment Chocolat, Hermé’s elevated take on the classic flan pâtissier. Rich Dominican Republic 80% Valrhona dark chocolate is folded into a silky baked custard encased in crisp shortcrust pastry and finished with delicate cocoa nib nougatine for added crunch.
Flavor Over Spectacle
For Hermé, innovation has never been about chasing novelty or creating the next viral dessert. Inspiration, he explained, can come from almost anywhere—an ingredient, a conversation, a place, even a feeling. What matters is staying curious.
That philosophy has remained remarkably consistent, even as social media has transformed the pastry world. While platforms reward eye-catching creations and instant “wow” moments, Hermé insists the most important qualities can’t be captured through a screen. His work, he said, has always centered on “taste, texture, quality”—the elements that only reveal themselves once you take a bite.
As he put it simply: “Taste and texture are invisible. You have to taste to know.”
As the morning wrapped up and guests drifted onto Spring Street, that curiosity was still on full display. Just before leaving, I spotted Hermé studying a classic New York egg and cheese roll a colleague brought to the breakfast potluck from a nearby bodega with the same quiet fascination he’d spent describing the collaboration.
It felt like the perfect ending to the conversation. Whether it’s a rose-scented Ispahan Cronut or an iconic New York breakfast sandwich, great chefs never stop tasting, and they never stop wondering what they might learn from the next bite.
Available at Dominique Ansel Bakery (189 Spring St., Soho NYC) from 8 am daily July 23-26, until sold out.
Angelika Pokovba is a writer and longtime Francophile originally from NYC, now based in Mexico. She’s into food, wine, skincare, and all things French—especially summers in the South and pharmacy finds she stocks up on way too early.
