Dessert as memory
Jordi Roca
Jordi Roca, pastry chef of El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, was named the world’s best pastry chef in 2014 for desserts that smell of a perfume, a cigar or a football pitch: the plated dessert as an idea.
- Currently
- El Celler de Can Roca, Girona
- City
- Paris
The youngest of the three Roca brothers runs the sweet side of El Celler de Can Roca, twice named the best restaurant in the world. His desserts are famous for their concepts: a dessert that recreates a perfume, the Viaje a La Habana that arrives as a smoking cigar of chocolate, an ice cream distilled from the smell of a bookshop. He founded Rocambolesc, an ice cream parlour with shops in Girona, Barcelona and Madrid, and Casa Cacao, a bean-to-bar chocolate house and hotel in Girona.
His work sits at the far end of the guide’s spectrum: no counter, no box, a plated dessert served at the end of a tasting menu in a restaurant that books out a year ahead.
Roca is here because the restaurant dessert is part of the art, and nobody has pushed it further.
The path
- 2012
Founds Rocambolesc
- 2014
World’s best pastry chef
- 2020
Casa Cacao chocolate house and hotel in Girona
