Anne Coruble of The Peninsula Paris named 2024 Pastry Chef of the year by La Liste

Superbly innovative dessert creations earn the talented chef one of the world’s most prestigious culinary awards

The Peninsula Paris is thrilled to announce that on 21 November 2023, its in-house Pastry Chef Anne Coruble was declared international Pastry Chef of the Year by La Liste.

Since 2015, La Liste has been recognised as one of the most authoritative rankings of chefs and restaurants around the globe. Each year, the France-based organisation compiles data from more than 700 international guides and review sources to determine the most highly acclaimed creators of culinary excellence worldwide, and announces its award winners via its annual list.

“I am elated and deeply honoured to have received this distinction,” Chef Coruble said upon learning of her triumph. “I feel privileged to be able to share my passion for culinary artistry with both my team members and diners at The Peninsula Paris.”

A Career Marked by Success

The La Liste award is only the latest achievement that the Normandy-born Chef Coruble has earned since joining The Peninsula Paris in late 2019 as Sous-Chef de Patisserie. In 2021, she was lauded by the Michelin Guide to France, which included her on its list of emerging young French pastry-makers to watch. Her daring dessert creations were further acclaimed in subsequent rankings of the hotel’s two-Michelin-starred fine dining French restaurant L’Oiseau Blanc. In October 2022 – seven months after her appointment to the post of Pastry Chef– she received the award for Best Dessert at the annual Prix de l’Excellence Gastronomique hosted by Guide Lebey, the premier guide to Parisian restaurateurs and chefs. Her award-winning dessert – a crystalised tobacco leaf filled with a smoked-vanilla emulsion with fleur-de-sel foam, vanilla caviar and vanilla ice cream – debuted at L’Oiseau Blanc and is still featured on the menu there.

Ingenious and Delectable Creations

In her role at The Peninsula Paris, Chef Coruble strives to push the boundaries of her craft with creations that can seem unusual, even counterintuitive – but which are always superbly delicious. The desserts she has created for L'Oiseau Blanc, as well as the hotel’s Lobby and LiLi restaurants, have included such inventive flavour combinations as girolles with fir buds and caramelised hazelnuts; dark chocolate with Taggiasche olives; and citrus fruits with seaweed.

Her most recent creations include an exquisite “Snowdrop” Bûche de Noël, crafted for hotel guests in time for the winter holidays, and inspired by the fragile white flower that blossoms in the coldest months of winter. The cake faithfully echoes the delicate shape of a snowdrop bloom, with three elegant chocolate petals, filled with Piedmont hazelnut praline, enclosing the main form of the Yule log. The log itself is a sumptuous composition of creamy marbled vanilla-hazelnut, Creusois biscuit, and crunchy roasted hazelnuts with black cardamom, modelled in the likeness of an upright Christmas tree. Accompanied by black cardamom-infused buttermilk, along with a stracciatella of Peruvian chocolate and a fleur de sel-smoked praline, the Yule log provides a show-stopping finale to any holiday feast.

Decadence Balanced by Sustainability

In an effort to embrace sustainability and support local agriculture, Chef Coruble also makes a point of seeking out locally grown and produced ingredients for her recipes. Her creations – including unrefined honey, cream, organic cider, and many varieties of artisanal chocolate (her favourite medium to work with) - reflect the changing seasonal produce of both her native Normandy and other regions of France.

In keeping with this ethos, for her menu of festive sweet and savoury Christmas Afternoon Tea offerings, available throughout the month of December at The Peninsula Paris’s Le Lobby restaurant, Chef Coruble spotlights ingredients like chestnuts, citrus fruits, and chocolate – products which are both regionally produced and wonderfully indulgent. In this way, she seeks to balance a sense of ecological responsibility with gustatory pleasure.

“It is essential, in my opinion, for chefs like me to stay mindful of environmental impact as we pursue our craft,” said Chef Coruble. “Creating marvellous cuisine is deeply meaningful work – but doing so while preserving our precious planet is more meaningful still.”