Lee Hae-rin is a City Desk reporter at The Korea Times, covering social issues, tourism and taekwondo. She is passionate about speaking up for the rights of minorities, including women, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities and animals as well as discovering the latest makgeolli trend in town. Feel free to reach her at lhr@koreatimes.co.kr.
INTERVIEW Award-winning French pastry chef reinvents Korean winter dessert
Pierre-Jean Quinonero's strawberry bingsoo / Courtesy of Four Seasons Hotel Seoul
By Lee Hae-rin
Pierre-Jean Quinonero, a rising star pastry chef from France, presented an iconic reinterpretation of a Korean wintertime dessert as Strawberry Bingsoo, or shaved ice treats with strawberries, with a French twist.
During his first visit to Korea, from Jan. 11 to 13, Quinonero created a combination of local seasonal strawberries with meringue and Chantilly cream, inspired by his previous signature dessert Vacherin Frasie, through a collaboration with Four Seasons Hotel Seoul Pastry Head Chef Jimmy Boulay.
“This is the first time I learned about bingsoo,” he said during a recent interview with The Korea Times at the Four Seasons Hotel Seoul, adding that making the iced dessert with such a combination of winter seasonal ingredients would be “unimaginable” in his home country.
Pierre-Jean Quinonero with his award-winning dessert Hazelnut and Vanilla Paris-Brest / Courtesy of Four Seasons Hotel Seoul
In Korea, strawberries are a popular wintertime seasonal fruit that has a solid texture and juicy, sweet flavors, whereas French strawberries are seasonal in the summertime and have a softer and more fragile texture. It was interesting to learn that competition grows fierce every winter in the Korean hotel and bakery industry to present innovative strawberry-themed promotions and menus, he said.
In Quinonero's opinion, as a pastry chef who focuses on maximizing natural visual qualities and the sweetness of ingredients while refraining from using any artificial additives, Korean strawberries' vivid red color and high sugar content make them a great food material to work with.
“For me, it’s very important that I use the best ingredients – best sugar, best flavor, best strawberries. If you have a bad ingredient, you can’t make a good taste … In the case of Korean strawberries, it’s very good. It’s very tasty and has a lot of sweetness. The color is perfect. The size is perfect. It’s very interesting,” he said.
Another seasonal local ingredient he added to the dessert is buckwheat. He sprinkled locally sourced buckwheat, adding a freshly layered crunchy texture with a nutty taste to the sweet dessert.
This would not have been possible with French buckwheat, he explained. The buckwheat flour, widely used in crepes, is too hard and difficult to chew when used in its grain form.
Now he plans to devise a bingsoo-themed dessert for the Michelin Guide one-star restaurant Le Cap at the Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat, Four Seasons Hotel near Nice, France, where he is an executive pastry chef. The dessert’s icy flavor will suit the region’s hot weather, he said.
Born in Auvergne in central France, Quinonero developed a passion for the culinary world at a young age from the influence of his father who ran a wine business.
The 29-year-old who has over 202,000 followers on Instagram received several awards and recognitions, including the Passion Dessert prize by the Michelin Guide 2023, Pastry Chef of the Year 2023 by La Liste, a renowned global guide to restaurant, pastry and hotel selections.
Quinonero’s exclusive strawberry bingsoo and award-winning Hazelnut and Vanilla Paris-Brest, a crispy ring-shaped choux pastry made with unique moist cream piping techniques, are available at the hotel’s lobby lounge and bakery until April 30.