In late 2023, during a ceremony in Munich, the International Union of Bakers and Confectioners named a French woman the world’s best confectioner. It was the first time a woman had received this prestigious award in its 92 years. That historic night in Munich may not have transpired as it did without a French girl’s visit to faraway Mexico 19 years ago.
Nina Métayer was born in La Rochelle, a coastal city in western France. She prefers to keep details about her parents private, only revealing that they gave her a taste for good food. She grew up with two younger sisters and spent 10 years in Alsace in the northeast of France. A young Nina enjoyed playing the piano and theatre, and took art classes in school. She was particularly interested in travelling. So, naturally, when a student exchange programme gave her a chance to go to Mexico for a year, she took it. There, she met a French couple who ran a bakery, and inspiration struck.
Nina Métayer
She felt that French baking skills could be successfully exported to Mexico and went back to France with a plan.“I was dreaming to go back and live in Mexico,” Nina told THE WEEK. “My goal was to start a bakery in Playa del Carmen or Tulum, booming tourist destinations. So, after the baccalaureate, I started a vocational training course to become a baker.” She then moved to Melbourne and practised her craft there. But, the desire to go further in terms of technique and creativity pushed her to get trained in pastry-making at the renowned Ferrandi school in Paris.
She began her professional career at a Parisian five-star hotel and later became head pastry chef at another. Her first signature dessert, Lîle Flottante Exotique (Exotic Floating Island), was hailed by the press as the third best sweet discovery of the year. Nina’s accolades and accomplishments since then are too many to enumerate. She has also worked with several international establishments, which include contributions to projects in London, Shanghai and two exclusive collections for Jaeger-LeCoultre’s 1931 Cafés in locations around the globe.
In 2020, alongside her business-to-business services, she launched her first patisserie, named Delicatisserie. It was fully online―customers would place orders online and then either choose a collection point or opt for delivery. “The concept was consistent with my belief that excellence, ecology and social commitment are as necessary for a sustainable future as they are economically viable,” she said. Delicatisserie offers made-to-order pastries in plastic-free packs and has a zero-waste policy―fruit peelings, for example, are used in syrups, toppings or coulis.
Exotic Floating Island
Nina is happy that sweet tooths have followed her vision. All the same, the success of the business prompted her to expand offline, too. “I opened an outlet in 2021 in Paris, then in 2022 at Issy-les-Moulineaux (a Paris suburb),” she said.
The Encounter
Looking back, Nina said every moment has been essential, starting right from being introduced to the materials that go into food and pastry-making. “Apprenticeships in bakery, then in pastry-making, that required me to surpass myself; meeting the pastry chef Camille Lesecq and the kitchen chef Jean-François Piège was both important for me,” she said. “And, every day, my work alongside my teams is memorable.”
Blackcurrant Pear Flower
She said her greatest challenges were with herself. “I have had to acquire skills that I did not think I could achieve, outdo myself constantly, sometimes going against my character, for example, not being patient, and learning to be confident.” Nina said that when she started, the bakery profession in general was male-dominated. “In pastry-making, women rarely reached the position of chef,” she said. “It pushed me to prove people wrong when they told me I could not do it, and to give my best to show that, even if I was a woman, I could reach a high level.”
And reach a high level, she did. How did it feel at the summit? That night in Munich. “It is an honour and a great source of pride, especially since this award is recognition of a career path and, above all, of the day-to-day work of my teams,” she said. “It is awarded not for a ‘feat’ or a competition, but for a body of know-how, commitment to our craft, entrepreneurship, our capacity for innovation. And, as it is the first time this title has been awarded to a woman, it is even more gratifying.”
Nina is quick to add that the most important aspect of her work is the chance to share joy, make gourmets and her teams happy, and express feelings through pastries. She said it was essential to transmit both skills and “gestures” through the craft.
Gestures?
Notre-Dame king cake
“The starting point can be smell, a landscape, the discovery of a town or countryside, a texture, a sound, an encounter, a memory,” she explained. “Everything that arouses in me an emotion, a sensation or a curiosity that I want to share to please people. That is where the creative process begins, always with its many missteps, that allow us to move forward and arrive at the desired result.”
Her 2020 galette des rois is an example. (Galette des rois translates to king cake. Also known as three kings cake, it is associated with the Christian festival of Epiphany.) The cake was a tribute to the majestic rose windows of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. She worked with a designer for the motif, which was then printed using a 3D printer used to make food-grade silicon moulds.
While “gestures”―the art―are an essential part of her work, taste is at the heart of it. She said taste highlights the know-how of the pastry craftsperson. But, does the focus on taste raise concerns about health? Nina was candid. “Patisserie is a sweet pleasure and should remain so, but without [sweetness] masking the flavours,” she said. “Less refined sugars, such as muscovado (from sugar cane) are also interesting. So is using ripe, naturally sweet seasonal and local fruits. The use of high quality butter or cream in artisanal pastry is not a health issue [compared with] industrial products made with too much bad fat and added sugar.”
Wild Fruit Heart
Having achieved everything she has by the age of 35, what is next? “I really love my life, both personal and professional, as it is,” she said. Her husband, Mathieu Salomé, is the general manager of her business. Her two daughters, one aged six and one aged three, are regular sous-chefs on her Instagram and YouTube accounts. She has close to 3.5 lakh followers on Instagram and just over 31,700 subscribers on YouTube.
“My priority is to take care of all our customers, as well as my teams, to give our best every day,” she said. “We do, of course, have plans, such as a new outlet in Paris, to expand a little in France and also to continue to work internationally.” The mention of working internationally begs the question whether she was considering coming to the Indian market.
She pointed out that she has to expand the business in a reasoned way, but, does not rule out the possibility. “India is an interesting country we would like to discover,” she said. “We may consider coming, one day.”
Tasting success: Nina (left) with Günther Koerffer, former president of the International Union of Bakers and Confectioners, and Wu Tzu Ching, who won the world baker of the year award.
Her outlet in Paris