Why Tirpse’s Rin Horiuchi is Hong Kong’s best pastry chef: the 100 Top Tables 2022 winner was inspired by Pierre Hermé – and Monet – but has a culinary style that’s all his own
- The Japanese chef has ‘always loved desserts’, but never dreamed of becoming a chef – his parents were both office workers – but then he watched a TV special on legend Pierre Hermé
- Horiuchi graduated from the Chateau de Vigny Culinary School, worked in restaurants in France and Japan, and is perhaps best known for his delectable Cloud cake
All it takes for inspiration to take hold is a spark. Whether that inspiration leads to something simple like a wardrobe choice or a lifelong pursuit and successful career – that is a combination of circumstance and personal choice.
For Rin Horiuchi, winner of the Best Pastry Chef award from 100 Top Tables 2022, becoming a chef was the furthest thing from his mind when he was growing up in Japan. “Both my parents were office workers. That’s what I always thought I would be when I grew up,” he said.
His most famous creation is undoubtedly his Cloud cake. A combination of damask rose, raspberries, vanilla and lychees, the aesthetically pleasing white cloud presentation is a combination Eastern and Western flavours.
The luscious cake is presented as a white chocolate mousse cloud with a textured surface reminiscent of dew drops on a spring morning. Inside, there are delicious pink and red layers that provide the rose, raspberry and lychee flavours. All of this is held up by a crispy coconut-flavoured pastry to smooth out the sharp aroma of the filling. A perfect marriage of Western dessert technique with bold, experimental ingredients.
While Tirpse’s website acknowledges the inspiration of Pierre Hermé’s Ispahan dessert, we believe that chef Horiuchi has refined and improved the flavour pairing and turned it into a creation of his own.
