Pastry chef Maxime Frédéric, crowned "the most creative pastry chef in the world" by La Liste. (Credit: Joel Saget/AFP.)
Creating refined, sustainable pastries while staying grounded and well-surrounded — Maxime Frederic has managed to bring together the worlds of haute cuisine and humble origins with quiet brilliance.
At just 36, the Norman-born chef has emerged as one of the most acclaimed figures in French pastry. Now at the helm of the pastry shop at Cheval Blanc Paris, the LVMH-owned luxury hotel, Frederic was recently named “the most creative pastry chef in the world” by the respected culinary travel guide La Liste.
“The creativity prize really represents us well,” he says with a smile. “I’m so happy — it highlights the work of a team.” For Frederic, team spirit isn’t just a platitude, it’s a personal philosophy. “What matters most to me is people,” says the chef, who has built a tight-knit circle of trusted collaborators over the years, whom he affectionately calls “his pillars.”
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“Maxime has genuine collective values,” confirms Arnaud Donckele, chef of the three-Michelin-starred Plenitude at Cheval Blanc. “He’s not out to impress, he just wants to offer affection. His pastry is just like him: made to be loved, not to astonish.”
A sentimental collaboration
Frederic and Donckele’s professional partnership began in 2019, when Cheval Blanc was assembling its founding team. Their meeting was instant chemistry. “It wasn’t just professional—it was emotional,” Frederic recalls. That same year, he left his prestigious post at George V, where he’d been head pastry chef since 2016, to join Cheval Blanc.
Before that, he honed his craft for six years at Le Meurice, working first under Camille Lesecq, then as the right hand of celebrated pastry chef Cedric Grolet.
Back to the land
Though his dream was always to work in a grand Parisian palace, Frederic never lost touch with his roots. Raised in the Cotentin Peninsula, he grew up on his grandparents’ dairy farm, now run by his sister Noemie. It was his grandmother, Bernadette, who sparked his love of pastry.
“With her, there was always a reason to bake a cake,” he remembers fondly.
In 2019, concerned by his sister’s financial difficulties, he and his wife Claire decided to step in and help. “I couldn’t keep living my dream in Paris while hers was becoming a nightmare,” he says simply. They shifted the farm’s focus to egg production—ironically, an ingredient he often struggled to source.
Today, eggs from the family farm are delivered weekly to Cheval Blanc. That same year, he also connected with hazelnut growers in Lot-et-Garonne, forging a lasting partnership grounded in friendship and shared values.
“2019 was a magical year,” he reflects. “What’s beautiful are family projects — whether they’re of blood or of heart.”
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Expanding the universe
The momentum hasn’t stopped. In 2021, just after the grand opening of Cheval Blanc Paris, his daughter Hortense was born. Months later, Donckele earned an extraordinary three Michelin stars for Plenitude, where the Michelin guide praised Frederic’s desserts as “elevating pastry to rarely seen heights.”
In 2022, he received the Coup de Cœur award at the Trophees Fou de Pâtisserie for his mille-feuille, a labor of love that took two years to perfect. That same year, he also took the reins at the Louis Vuitton cafes near Cheval Blanc, deepening his ties with the LVMH universe.
Last year, Frederic turned his focus to something more personal — his wife Claire’s dream of opening a bakery. Together with four partners, he launched Pleincoeur in the Batignolles neighborhood of Paris. “Doing it alone feels empty to me,” he says. “Working as a team is what gives it meaning.”
From palace kitchens to the family farm, Frederic continues to build a world where excellence and empathy go hand in hand and where pastry is not just a craft, but a shared language of love.
