Paul Gardin, Executive Pastry Chef of Diamond Hotel
Meet Chef Paul Gardin, the new executive pastry chef at the Diamond Hotel. The young, chatty Frenchman sits down with ClickTheCity to tell us his story, from being a thirteen year-old kitchen apprentice, to working in Michelin Star restaurants, and traveling all over the world for his passion. Find out his advice to aspiring young chefs (warning, it’s not going to pretty), and just exactly what he thinks about the cronut!
Question: How did growing up in Normandy, France affect the way you cook?
Chef Paul Gardin: I think with all the products we have, the butter, the cream, and apples–all the good stuff–we are born into a cooking culture. All French chefs that I met outside the country are from Normandy. It’s really a food culture. There are a few places in France like Savoy, Brittany, Normandy, and the southwest, that are the big points of food culture. Everything comes from there.
How did your family affect your choice to become a chef?
My mom is into healthy living and loves Pierre Hermé. She follows the magazines, the big chefs, and the 3-Michelin star restaurants. My father was this epicurean guy. He loved big steaks, roasted potatoes, and eating a lot! He was also a big fan of pastries. When he would go to Paris, he would go to the big pastry shops and he and his friends would bring back the cakes from Ladurée and Pierre Hermé.
Did your parents also bake or cook?
Yeah, every weekend we had those big family dinners with friends, colleagues, and staff coming over. My mom started with the cooking and then it would be my dad. I would always be around, helping with the serving, preparing the cheese platter, all those stuff. At the end I was the one cooking for those dinners. Every year we would have those big family meetings and I would prepare the food there.
So when did you start training to become a professional chef?
In France, they [the school system] ask you what you want to do. Everyone was like, you should go to chef school because you’re always cooking and you’re always taking care of us. So I moved to the general culinary school. As soon as I got there, I realized that the kitchen was my thing and I was feeling really good there, you know? My father died the same year that I joined the school, so at this particular period, I didn’t want to talk much, with customers or even with my family. I was a bit detached. But in the kitchen, I was feeling good and doing what I wanted. It was working well. All the teachers and the staff appreciated what I did. It went on like this and I started to become the best in the school–from being the worst!
I was so passionate about it. That’s how I came to be in the kitchen.
How was it being a young person in a professional kitchen?
When I started I was thirteen, I was lost. Being in school was okay, because you are also with young people. But when I started in the professional kitchen, I became kind of lost. In France, the chefs are really strict, especially the Michelin-starred ones. You don’t touch anything…you just peel the carrots!
And how long were you “peeling carrots?”
I think I spent my first days preparing the salad. Peeling the carrots, cleaning the fish… the amazing stuff [laughs]. But I was always present and working long hours. My parents are from this work culture, where you don’t complain, you do what you have to do, and just do it. And that’s how it works in the kitchen. If you want to grow up that’s how it’s going to be. There is no secret about it.
You have to succeed; there is no other way. I was just working and working. Then the chefs saw that I was someone you could trust. I was a good soldier. Tell me to do something, and it will be done properly. So even if I was just an apprentice, I was getting responsibilities that some cooks didn’t get. This is when it started to be hard, because I was an apprentice and I started to get over people who were regulars there. (There was) jealousy and stuff like this…
How did that affect you?
It just made me fight even more. I really liked what I was doing, so for some, jealousy and sabotage were coming out, but for others, I became that guy who you could follow and trust. I was really helpful too, so people in time learned that from me and that’s how I grew up in the kitchen.
What was the first thing that you successfully made?
You know, I was thinking about this and I cannot remember the first thing I made that I was proud of. But the biggest stress I got in making a dessert was the soufflé. There are all these stories about the soufflé, which are not really true actually! It was my first (time to make) dessert for a Michelin-star restaurant. So I was like, this is what I want to do and I have to show off what I can do. So I was really stressed and did it two or three times. The chef got mad because I was late—but I did it! And it came out perfectly and I was so happy. It took me a while, but I did it. I understood that you could do anything you just have to trust what you do.
Which was the most memorable work experience for you?
I was working in a hotel called Les Meurice Palace. This was my most memorable experience because of the budget they had for the kitchen. You could have as much truffle as you wanted; create a showpiece with Valrhona (chocolate) and other stuff we don’t allow in normal restaurants. I remember we had this big block of chocolate, like 100 kilos of it, and it was just for showpieces that they would throw! They just wanted perfection. For Christmas we made chocolate snowmen in glass bowls and every room had one. It was hours and hours of work and it was just for the satisfaction of the customer. Anything could be rejected for a small defect—it was thrown straight to the garbage! So you had to be perfect.
But what I will always remember was the night we got the third Michelin star. All the chefs came in with champagne. We waited for the executive chef, and then we opened the bottles and threw a party in the kitchen! Everything there was 'over.' Over-nice, over-beautiful, over-expensive, over, over, over all the time! That was what I liked there. But it was a tiring job. It’s not something you can do all your life, for me at least.
Why? What made it extra tiring?
You don’t live anymore. Christmas we were sleeping there, New Year’s we were sleeping there, Easter we were sleeping there… You had no weekends and I was still at school! One week per month I was at school, and the three other weeks I had to work.
They first thing they tell you when you get there is to forget weekends, forget holidays, forget days-off, forget the hours—don’t count 8 hours a day because you will never do it. The half-day was 8 hours! So long as there is work, you work. It was a shame if you left first, so we all had to leave together like a team.
So did you take a break? What did you do after?
After I decided to stop there, I went back home to be close to my family. After my father died, I was away for a few years so I needed to go back. I had just graduated and got the best award you could get. Then I had an opportunity to work in the Caribbean islands, so I flew there.
It was so different from the world that I knew and I was so far from my family. The products were so different. I had to adapt. It was my first experience since graduating, so I think I was a bit overconfident and I wanted to show off. I had a big lack of experience at this time, but I was overconfident so it was balanced [laughs]. Whatever you asked me, I would do it.
So was this how you started traveling all over the world?
I stayed a year there, and then I went back home. I then moved to Australia, because I wanted to travel. I didn’t have a job offer there or anything… I found a job there and stayed there for a year. Then I went back to Paris and worked for another Michelin-starred restaurant. I was with them for a little less than a year when they asked me to go to Lebanon to open a French fine-dining restaurant. From there, they asked me to open another restaurant in Bahrain. I went there and opened the franchise; then I got the offer in Manila!
So how do you find Manila so far?
Well, we had a big storm just when I arrived. It was flooded everywhere, but I was so happy to be here because it was so different from Bahrain and all the other places I’d worked in. All the people are pleased to have a French chef here! They are all smiling and happy; they are nice, polite…
What local products are you interested in using for your pastries?
In Diamond Hotel there is a big Filipino culture. So there are a lot of ingredients like ube, pandan…
How do you find those?
For me the products are nice! Everything is super sweet [laughs]. The first thing I saw was the ensaymada. They brought it to me and they told me it was the bestseller. It looked like a brioche with cheese on top… They told me I had to try it, but I was like… [laughs] "Maybe tomorrow!" But I tried it and it was nice. It’s a different taste, a different flavor.
Perfect for the holidays: Diamond Hotel's top selling Ensaymadas
What flavors of macarons have you created?
We have chocolate, passion fruit, raspberry, pistachio raspberry, olive oil, salted caramel.
The trend now is healthy food and dieting [laughs]. We are trying to replace the fat with healthier alternatives. Like, take the ganache. We are trying to think of ways to replace the butter, for example. This is how I started adding olive oil to the desserts. I have two desserts on the table that contain olive oil, (the macaron and) the fruit charlotte. The cream inside is mascarpone and olive oil. Olive oil is pretty interesting, flavor-wise.
Chef Paul Gardin's Assorted French Macarons (P65 each)
Olive Oil French Macaron
Chef Paul's Fruit Charlotte (P200)
What about the Diamond Hotel’s famous chocolate cake?
The chocolate cake is what everyone looks for and likes. It’s a dark mousse, with a moist biscuit and a hazelnut crisp. Everyone loves this, from kids to adults.
I think all my cakes are simple, but high in flavor. When you eat the pistachio cakes, you will taste the pistachio. It’s not just going to be green!
Wild Pistachio Dome (P250)
Pistachio Eclair
I also love (making new) designs. But I don’t like it when it’s like, an Eiffel tower and there are a thousand things on top. Sometimes people will just put chocolate on something that doesn’t contain any chocolate inside. This doesn’t make sense and I try to avoid this with my staff. I tell them to stay simple and clean. It’s really about flavors.
Double Baked Cheesecake (P250), Fruit Charlotte, and Wild Pistachio Dome
Delice Chocolat (P250)
What kind of pastry do you prefer to eat: chocolate, fruity, or creamy?
It depends on the day. But milky chocolate is what comes all the time. I love milk chocolate.
What new things are you bringing to the Diamond Hotel?
I am also here to teach them (my team). They have all my recipes—my books are on the table. Any time they need it, they can take it. I really enjoy training them and I really hope that in 2 or 3 years I will see them as the new executive chef in the hotel or calling me to thank me or sending me a picture of what they have made.
What I am doing is just traveling, taking pictures, ideas, opening magazines, books, following the hotels and the big pastry shops on Instagram, Facebook…
Pistachio, Chocolate, and Raspberry Eclairs (P1,300 for a box of 6, including Caramel, Coffee, and Vanilla flavors)
Speaking of trends, what can you say about cronuts?
If I have to do it, I will do it [laughs]. But I am against that! It’s unproductive and breaking the imagination! Now, everyone is doing it, and just changing the name! Everybody is doing the same, because it’s the 'thing' to do, but I don’t really agree with that. I won’t do it just because other people are doing it.
What is your advice to young chefs?
The main thing that people have to understand is that it’s really a life of sacrifice. You can’t throw someone there and tell him or her it’s a fantastic world and everything is so easy and you will have so much fun everyday! It’s something you have to be passionate about. Getting to the top and getting the big jobs mean you are going to have make a lot of sacrifices and a lot of compromises.
It’s important to me to understand what people like. I have to understand and compromise, not like those chefs that say, ‘no I don’t do this because it’s not me!’ You have to understand what people want if you want to be successful. You’re not only cooking for yourself, you’re cooking for the people around you. I like the idea of making people happy. If I’m going to serve something that people don’t understand, what’s the point of me being here?
You’re still pretty young. How long do you see yourself doing this?
At the end of the day, this job is my life. I don’t see myself doing something else… for now [laughs]. It’s like that for my friends and me. We are a small group of passionate people.
This is a service job. You’re in the hospitality business and you’re supposed to make people happy. Making people happy and satisfied is one of the best things you can get in this job.
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Cap your holiday feast with Diamond Hotel’s bestsellers: Supermoist Chocolate Cake, Le Royale, Baked Cheesecake, and the famous Ube Ensaymada. Treat yourself to new kinds of sweetness with Diamond Hotel’s newest line-up of desserts created by its new executive pastry Chef Paul Gardin. His new creations include the Double Baked Cheesecake, Delice Chocolat, Wild Pistachio Dome, and French Macarons (in flavors like Olive Oil, Vanilla, Salted Caramel, Black Truffle, and more).
Experience Chef Paul Gardin’s luscious creations, made available at Diamond Hotel’s Lobby Lounge and The Cake Club outlets (Bonifacio High Street and Powerplant Mall).
