'Without sugar, there would be no dessert and without dessert there would be no pastry chef," says Fabrizio Fiorani, who was awarded Asia's Best Pastry Chef 2019 at Asia's 50 Best Awards, in Macau, in March.
The Italian has been the pastry chef at Michelin-starred Il Ristorante Luca Fantin in Tokyo, Japan, for four years. In that time, he has developed a reputation for his whimsical, eclectic twists on Italian sweet treats.
"After six courses and a couple of glasses of wine, if you don't focus your attention on dessert, my job is redundant," he says. Hence the whimsical designs for his pastries. "They are funny because I need to refocus the attention of the gastronomes on my work. That is important."
Asia's Best Pastry Chef 2019 Fabrizio Fiorani. Photos: Nianne-Lynn Hendricks
His signature dessert is occhiali di tiramisù, which, he says, has a bit of him on the plate. It is his love for tiramisu ("the perfect combination of coffee and mascarpone") which gave birth to this creation. Served in a glass, the tiramisu is accompanied by a plastic red nose (bearing a close resemblance to his own) with a coffee and chocolate biscuit in the shape of a pair of spectacles.
"Merging the culture of where you're from [with] where you are is important for taste," he says. "Whether in Rome, Tokyo or Florence, the main focus is the taste. If you focus on the taste then everything else comes easy. First the taste, then the design. I like traditional tastes."
At Asia's 50 Best Awards, chef Fiorani's talk featured the dessert Zucchero, made almost entirely of sugar. Keeping up to date with the times, it even came with its own QR code, which when scanned led to the recipe for the candyfloss, caramel and ice cream concoction.
"My vital ingredient is sugar," he explains. "I describe my pastry as Italian, light and in line with the philosophy of Il Ristorante Luca Fantin, using ingredients grown in Japan, but produce that you can get in Italy. I do not use matcha or yuzu, though they are amazing. I prefer to use bergamot due to our philosophy. The ingredients may be grown in Japan but if they are not found in Italy we do not use them.
"I am very lucky because during the school summer vacations I worked in a gelato shop when I was 14. When I finished school, I started working in a Michelin-starred restaurant and then worked my way up to a three Michelin-starred restaurant, always doing pastry."
Fiorani's edible interpretation of Banksy's Girl With Balloon. Nianne-Lynn Hendricks
"I can't cook pasta," he says with a laugh. "I can only do pastry."
Sugar may be his "vital" ingredient. But it isn't his favourite one. That's chocolate, mostly because of its diversity.
"You can do a lot of things with it," he says. "My favourite chocolate is from Guyana. And it has to be dark, 70%, which is the perfect balance for the bitterness of dark chocolate."
Chef Fiorani has even written a book on pastry, Tra l'Onirico E Il Real, which loosely translates as "between dreams and reality".
"Reality is the taste and my dessert is an eye-opener. The dream is the shape. The tiramisu in a glass is a good example. It has a traditional taste but comes in a contemporary shape.
"I try to merge art with chocolate. Before you eat my dessert your brain has already tried it: the visual idea, the smell, the touch, if it is crunchy, if it is liquid. The taste is the main goal but it is the last thing that you try. When you see my dessert inspired by Banksy's Girl With Balloon, the dessert has already moved inside your head before you taste it. That is very important: to dream a bit with some chocolate."
Fiorani's signature dessert, occhiali di tiramisù, a crispy and creamy coffee and mascarpone composition. Nianne-Lynn Hendricks
Chef Fiorani is also the creator of the world's first polycarbonate chocolate mould, in collaboration with Pavoni Italia. Called Iconic, it is essentially a praline mould with a hole.
"Lucio Fontana is the first artist in the world who used a red square paint to say 'my heart is outside'. It is the same with the praline mould. I chose to make them with a hole, because why not?
"I am trying to do things step by step. I don't know what is next after winning Asia's Best Pastry Chef," he says.
If there is one striking feature about chef Fiorani, apart from this eye-catching desserts, is it his black gloves.
"I feel that black is better than white. Blue gloves look too medical. Black, compared to white, seems safer when dealing with pastry. It is functional fashion," he says.
Though chef Fiorani has at times been accused of being too much out of the box, he says: "It is very important to be out of the box. There are a lot of great pastry chefs but sometimes we focus too much on the technique. I don't think that the beauty of a dessert is as important as the idea behind it. I first work on the taste, then the shape and lastly focus on beautifying the dessert."
