How this Singapore pastry chef turned her passion into a profession
On Tras Street, in the heart of Singapore's humming fundamental business district, is a pastel-hued patisserie that has delighted many with its delicious, pretty desserts.
Nesuto, which means "nest" in Japanese, serves up delectable cakes and entremets with unusual combinations. Its pastry chef-cum-founder Alicia Wong likes to keep flavours simple and has created star desserts such as the heart-shaped Queen Ispahan, which boasts flavours of lychee, raspberry and rose. It is an entremet with a surprise in the middle and is named afterwards the fragrant damask ispahan rose.
She said: "We want people to exist surprised. It's almost like when you unwrap a present, the kind of feeling that it gives you. So information technology's the aforementioned when you're eating the dessert.
"After they cut it open, immediately, the phones will be out, they start taking photos, and so because you have all of these different colours and layering, they'll be very curious."
Wong's love for food and flavours was inspired by her Cantonese grandmother, who was a very adept melt and with whom she spent a lot of time in the kitchen. "She would make dishes that are then difficult to fix, similar braising a duck by hand," she recalled.
"I think the corporeality of respect she has for ingredients, how she really pours out her centre and soul into making a dish that is so good, that'south what inspires me. That'south why I'm then intrigued well-nigh food and flavours."
Wong studied data technology at Nanyang Polytechnic but she wasn't keen on a deskbound job. When a expert friend enrolled with premier F&B school At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy, she decided to switch and sign up too, as she was curious about how it would be like working in the kitchen. Fortunately, her parents didn't object. "My parents were very supportive. They ever say, 'become and try, if you don't similar it, you tin come up out and exercise something else'."
She got her large break when she interned at a pastry shop that fabricated cheesecakes and macarons. Her instructors taught her how to produce the pastry the fashion they wanted and left her on her own from the second calendar month onwards, thus giving her the opportunity to discover how far she could go.
When she graduated from At-Sunrice, she worked every bit a pastry chef in Capella Singapore for half dozen years. She was keen to start her own concern and set up a Japanese kiosk selling choux pastry with some friends. In 2022 she finally took the plunge and opened Nesuto.
Every dessert at the store goes through several months of inquiry and evolution earlier information technology hits the shelves. Wong's favourite part of the procedure is the experimentation of flavours.
"It'due south so rewarding and information technology's so crazy at the same time, to be able to convert the flavours that y'all take in heed, to something that you tin can really see, bear on and taste," she shared.
"The biggest challenge as a pastry chef, I personally feel, is to be able to outdo myself constantly, how to continuously better on a particular product when it's already nigh there."
Her travels to Japan influenced her minimalist approach to taste and design. Wong said: "We decided to proceed information technology simple when information technology comes to season. When it comes to decoration we will merely apply ornamentation or colours related to the flavour that was represented in the block itself."
Another source of inspiration is her walks. "If I'm thinking of a block that's blackcurrant, then I'll think of the bloom that I saw at the park that's a scrap lavender, very light lilac color. And so I'll try to get edible florals or even fruit or herbs that are similar in color."
In 2021, Wong introduced wine and dessert pairing to raise the flavours of the desserts, and to provide another dimension to the enjoyment of Nesuto's cakes, which reverberate her vivacious personality and adventurous spirit.
She said: "The thing about pastry is that every pace is so important and every stride has to be and then meticulous. It's simply the whole bailiwick of it that I really enjoy. It's just like a fine art in itself."
Adapted from the series Remarkable Living (Season iv). Scout total episodes on CNA, every Dominicus at viii.30pm.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/remarkable-living/singapore-pastry-chef-alicia-wong-nesuto-tras-street-291816
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