Growing up, Nicolas Guercio wanted to be an architect. That didn’t work out, but her career as a top pastry chef in Paris is not far from that original dream. “My sugar work and sugar exhibitions are based on architecture,” Guercio, now head pastry chef at Hotel Lutetia, tells the Observer, sitting upstairs at the property’s Brasserie Lutetia.
Guercio, who also once wanted to be a motorcycle cop, took a circuitous route to land his dream job. However, despite his ambitions, Guercio did not succeed in school, and at that time (about 25 years ago), “there were few options,” he recalls, admitting that he used to get into a lot of trouble as a teenager. . “The cook and the cakes were two of them. It was not as fashionable as it is today, with The top chef again The Great Chef.”
Instead, Guercio saw the kitchen as a way to gain discipline—almost like joining the military. He enrolled in a culinary school, and spent about five years studying the art of cooking. It was in her later years that she developed a love for desserts and cakes, because of the precision baking required and because it meant she wouldn’t smell like fish and grease after work.
“I didn’t go back to the kitchen,” he says of moving from cooking to cakes, which are done in different areas of the restaurant. You’ve discovered that you love the precision and rules that come with cakes. “[Baking] it is very strong. A hundred grams is a hundred grams in a cake. In the kitchen, one carrot may be big and one carrot small. One day you add too much salt, and the next day, you add the same amount, and not enough. But in pastry, it’s always the same. It helps a lot.”
Guercio also found himself drawn to the many creative aspects of cakes. “The second part was all the artistic aspects. “You can have beef, but you will never do a beef show,” he said.
Guercio worked as an apprentice at the Ritz Paris with pastry chef Eddie Benghanem before taking his skills around the world. He spent time in London, working for the Hakkasan group, before accepting a job at a private resort in the Seychelles, eventually ending up in Tokyo. But it was moving to St. Petersburg in Russia that changed Guercio’s life. It wasn’t meant to be a permanent move, but after Guercio met his now wife, he ended up staying.
He says: “I came for three months, and I realized that I enjoy living there. “It’s all about women, more or less. You follow the people you love, then you go to another country, then you break up, then you move to another place. I met a girl one night, after that she became my girlfriend, then my fiancee, then my wife, then the mother of my children.”
After spending seven years in St. Petersburg, mainly working for a luxury restaurant, Guercio decided to return to France. She admits that returning to her country was “very difficult” until she got a job as a pastry teacher at the Ferrandi Paris cooking school. Then, a dream job appeared. Guercio was given the opportunity to relocate again, this time to Shanghai, to manage three stores. It was a huge salary, which would make a big difference to his family as his wife was pregnant with their second child at the time.
“I quit [Ferrandi] right there,” he recalls. “We have sold the car. We gave our furniture to charity shops. We said goodbye to school. Two days before we were to move, they withdrew that request. We had nothing. We stayed at my parents’ house. I was very angry, so I went to Shanghai. I got a lawyer. I went to the French Embassy and the French Embassy to find a way to get my money back. But, actually, I had to get a job. And I came [to Hôtel Lutetia] and they wanted a Christmas cook. I thought I would never work in a palace [hotel] because the level is very high and I was not ready for that.”
It turned out that fate was on Guercio’s side. He ended up staying at Hôtel Lutetia after his trial ended in 2019, and has been a pastry chef ever since. It worked out for the best – all his friends who were working in Shanghai before the pandemic ended up being fired during the COVID-19, and they had to leave the country very quickly during the pandemic.
“I have a lucky star looking down on me,” Guercio said, smiling. “We lost a lot of money, but I succeeded here. I used to walk around the streets doing nothing, and now I am a pastry chef in a palace in Paris, and I speak three languages. People have said, ‘They can make a movie about your life.’ No, but it’s fun the way it is.”
Guercio brings that sense of adventure to his creations at Hôtel Lutetia. He is part of a team of 18, who look after the delights of the hotel’s two restaurants, Brasserie Lutetia and Le Saint-Germain, in addition to its two bars, spa and room service. There are also special events and in-room amenities, such as a beautiful chocolate bar placed on the guest’s table upon arrival. Every morning, the team bakes around 200 croissants, brioche and a daily special cake. On weekends, Le Saint-Germain serves 150 guests afternoon tea. It adds more than 1,000 pastries daily, but Guercio keeps things interesting by pairing new innovations with these traditional offerings.
“This is a traditional Parisian brasserie, so we have to make it look like a brasserie but very high end,” he explains. “You might have the same thing that you would have in a brasserie, but here it’s much nicer, it has a better design. Our profiteroles are very good and beautiful. The old one is nice, but it’s bad—it always cracks.”
The pastry chef tries again. He likes to play with chocolate and sugar and create large pieces of sculpture. Last year, he decided to make a small chocolate dog for Valentine’s Day based on Lulu, the hotel’s mascot, but the team didn’t end up using it. A few months later, at Easter, he posted it on Instagram, and the response was overwhelming. Everyone forgot about the traditional chocolate eggs and asked for their own Lulu. She became so popular that Guercio made a five-metre tall tower of chocolate Lulus for the show, and has made several appearances again, including for Christmas, Pride and breast cancer awareness month.
“We made 250 [dogs] just a show tower, and all together, [around] 2,000,” said Guercio. “It’s been a lot of fun… That’s the power of social media. [A pastry idea] born in Shanghai, in two weeks you can find it everywhere—Sydney and Paris and California. It gives people a lot of ideas.”
As well as working at Hôtel Lutetia, Guercio has his own consulting firm, Guercio Advice. He recently collaborated with Kellogg at the London show, where he created Sacré-Cœur chocolate. He created a fake perfume bottle for Dior to sell for Christmas. Next, he wants to learn to breathe sugar, and finally, Guercio hopes to open his own pastry shop, maybe in Paris or maybe in the US He likes shops and chefs in Paris like Patrick Roger, Pierre Hermé, Christophe Michalak, Jacques Genin and Hugo & Victor, and pastries at La Grande Épicerie de Paris, nearby. However, he says that it is difficult to choose his favorite because he loves all cakes, which is what keeps him motivated every day.
“I’m not that kind of guy, you know?” Guercio helps celebrate. “Some guys just want a dark-skinned woman with blue eyes. No, I like all kinds of women. So if you ask me what kind of dessert I like, I’m not a chef who’s going to say, ‘Oh, I like lemon tart.’ Because chocolate tea is good too. And why not Paris Brest? I’m not putting anyone down or anything.”
