Nicolas Guercio wanted to be an architect since he was a child. Although this did not work out, his career as a high-end pastry chef in Paris was not far from his original dream. “My sugar work and sugar displays are based on architecture,” Guercio, now executive pastry chef at the Hotel Lutetia, told the Observer while sitting in the Lutetia Brasserie above the hotel.
Gurcio once wanted to be a motorcycle cop, but he took a circuitous route to find his dream job. However, despite Guercio’s ambitions, he did not do well in school and at the time (some 25 years ago) there were “very few options,” he recalls, admitting that he was often in trouble as a teenager. “Chefs and pastry chefs were two of them. It wasn’t as fashionable as it is today. top chef and head chef”.
Instead, Guercio saw the kitchen as a way to gain discipline, like joining the military. He attended culinary school and spent nearly five years studying the culinary arts. During his last years there, he fell in love with desserts and pastries, both because of the precision baking required and because it meant he didn’t come away from get off work smelling like fish and grease.
“I never went back to the kitchen,” he says of the switch from cooking to pastry, which is often done in a different area of the restaurant. He found that he preferred the precision and discipline of pastry. “[Baking] It’s very strict. One hundred grams is one hundred grams in pastry. In the kitchen, a carrot may be large and a carrot may be small. One day you add too much salt, the next day you add the same amount and still not enough. But when it comes to pastries, it’s always the same. Very practical.
Guercio also found himself interested in the more creative aspects of pastry. “The second part is all the artistic elements. You can eat beef, but you’ll never do a beef show,” he points out.
Guercio apprenticed with pastry chef Eddie Benghanem at the Ritz in Paris before taking his skills around the world. He spent time in London working for the Hakkasan Group, then accepted a job at a private resort in the Seychelles before finally arriving in Tokyo. But moving to St. Petersburg, Russia, changed Guercio’s life. It wasn’t a permanent move, but after Guercio met his now-wife, he ended up staying put.
“I came for three months and then I realized that I enjoyed living there,” he said. “It’s more or less all about women. You follow the person you love and then you go to another country and then they break up and then you move somewhere else. I found a girl for one night and she became My girlfriend, then my fiancée, then my wife, then the mother of my child.
After working for seven years in St. Petersburg, mostly for a luxury grocery store, Guercio decided to return to France. Returning to his home country was “very difficult,” he admits, until he found a job as a pastry instructor at the Ferrandi cooking school in Paris. Then, a dream job came along. Guercio was offered another transfer, this time to Shanghai, where he was responsible for three stores. It was a huge salary and it meant a lot to his family as his wife was pregnant with their second child at the time.
“I quit [Ferrandi] Right there,” he recalled. “We sold the car. We donated the furniture to charity shops. We said goodbye to school. Two days before we moved, they withdrew their offer. We had nothing. We were living at my parents’ house. I was upset and went Shanghai. I found a lawyer. I went to the French embassy and consulate to find a way to get my money back. But here I am. [to Hôtel Lutetia] They are looking for a Christmas chef. I thought I could never work at the palace [hotel] Because the level is too high, I’m not ready yet.
As it turned out, fate was on Gusio’s side. After the trial operation ended in 2019, he ended up staying at Hôtel Lutetia and has been working as the hotel’s pastry chef. This was the best outcome for him—all his friends who worked in Shanghai before the pandemic were laid off during COVID-19 and had to leave the country as quickly as possible during the pandemic.
“I have a lucky star looking down on me,” Guercio said with a laugh. “We lost a lot of money, but I made it here. I was a street gangster with nothing to do, and now I’m a pastry chef in a palace in Paris and I speak three languages. People said, ‘They could make a movie about The movie of your life. “No, but it would be fun.
Guercio brings this adventurous spirit to his creations at Hôtel Lutetia. He is part of a team of 18 people responsible for the sweet elements of the hotel’s two restaurants (Brasserie Lutetia and Le Saint-Germain), as well as the hotel’s two bars, spa and room service. There are also special events and in-room amenities, such as whimsical chocolate boats placed on guests’ tables upon arrival. Every morning, the team bakes approximately 200 croissants, brioches and daily special pastries. On weekends, Le Sint-Germain serves afternoon tea to 150 guests. That adds up to more than 1,000 pastries every day, but Guercio keeps things interesting by combining innovative inventions with these traditional products.
“It’s a traditional Parisian bistro, so we had to make it look like a bistro, but more high-end,” he explains. “You might get the same thing in a bistro, but here it’s fancier and better designed. Our chocolate is very delicate and beautiful. The classic thing is delicious, but ugly – it always breaks.
Pastry chefs are starting to experiment too. He enjoyed playing with chocolate and sugar and building large sculptures. Last year, he decided to create a Valentine’s Day chocolate dog based on the hotel’s mascot Lulu, but the team ended up not using it. A few months later, around Easter, he posted it on Instagram and it got a huge response. Everyone forgot about the traditional chocolate eggs and asked for their own Lulu. She became so famous that Guercio built a five-metre-high chocolate Lulus tower for an exhibition, and she has reappeared many times, including at Christmas, Pride Month and Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
“We did 250 [dogs] Just for the exhibition tower, together, [around] 2,000,” Guercio said. “It’s so interesting…that’s the power of social media. [A pastry idea] It was born in Shanghai and within two weeks you could find it in Sydney, Paris and anywhere in California. It gives people a lot of ideas.
In addition to working at Hôtel Lutetia, Guercio also owns his own consultancy, Guercio Advice. He recently collaborated with Kellogg’s on an exhibition in London, for which he created the Chocolate Sacred Heart. He created a fake perfume bottle for Dior’s Christmas ad. Next, he wants to learn how to blow sugar, and eventually, Guercio hopes to open his own pastry shop, perhaps in Paris or perhaps in the United States. and Hugo & Victor, as well as pastry shops at nearby La Grande Épicerie de Paris. However, he said it was hard to choose his favorite because he loves all pastries, which is what keeps him motivated every day.
“I’m not that kind of guy, you know?” Gurcio quipped. “Some guys just want blue-eyed blondes. No, I like all kinds of women. So if you ask me what my favorite dessert is, I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, I like lemon pie.’ Because the chocolate tart is also delicious. Why not have Paris-Brest? I don’t underestimate anyone or anything.
