Lluc Crusellas: how the best chocolate master in the world is cooked

Lluc Crusellas (Santa Eulàlia de Riuprimer, 1996) still can't quite believe the title he won in Paris as "the best chocolate master in the world". "I'm not aware of that phrase," he confesses weeks after lifting the trophy at El Carme pastry shop, in Vic, from where he led the entire process until reaching the prestigious international World Chocolate Masters competition. Crusellas tells how he prepared for the international competition as if he were explaining it to a friend, humbly and acknowledging his insecurities, but, above all, with a joy and passion for the world of pastry that is easily contagious.

"Without any pretension," the young pastry chef keeps repeating, who started his career almost by chance, when a cousin of his who worked with Nandu Jubany told him to spend a summer at the Calldetenes restaurant and see if he wanted to dedicate himself to gastronomy or his other hobby, cycling. He was still in high school, only 17 years old, when he was put to make desserts and he liked it. Ten years later he has become the world's leading reference, after training at Hofmann and Espai Sucre, and doing internships at La Pastisseria Barcelona with Josep María Rodríguez. "I like to do things well, organized and as they should be. When I started to consider going to the World Chocolate Masters, I decided I was going all out, I wasn't going to enjoy and live the experience," he recalls.

The adventure began in early 2021, when he prepared for the first phase of the competition, the Spanish qualifier, trying not to think that, if he passed it, then the rest of the world would come. It was the first competition he participated in and he won it. Chosen as the Spanish representative, he had a year to prepare for the international competition. "I could go and do what I could or go and blow everything up. Evidently, we decided to go all in, being aware that many countries were also very strong. I approached it as if it were the great goal of my life," he explains. To do this, he surrounded himself with "the best people there were in the things where I was weakest." "I know I'm 26 years old and there are many things for which I have no experience, I don't know or I'm unaware of them," he remarks.

He was accompanied by experts from the world of pastry, design, and art, but he also made sure to have a nutritionist, a personal trainer, and a psychologist to prepare him to withstand the pressure and nerves. All financed by PaVic, the company that owns the El Carme pastry shop and more than thirty bakeries in Osona and Berguedà, without any external sponsors. "As if it were a World Cup," he explains, "it was a gamble and a risk, if I had done terribly, they would have said 'what a show-off'." He even had time to write a chocolate recipe book, Xocolata. Postres d'autor al teu abast (Efadós), in which he also delves into the history of one of the most beloved ingredients.

"Two months before the competition, I became aware that we could get a good result when I saw that we were going with an incredible project," he continues, "I went to Paris thinking that being in the top 5 was a victory, it was going to be brutal, Spain had never been in the top 10." At the end of October, he arrived in the French capital to compete in the World Chocolate Masters, a competition with six tests, spread over 22 hours during three days. Crusellas and the rest of the participants had to present a large and a small sculpture; a dessert, replicated 28 times; a snack (48); a bonbon (30), and a petit four (60). "You're against the clock," he emphasizes.

The organization during the competition days, as well as the training that preceded it, having done the entire competition up to nine times, were the keys that earned him a first place. On the first day, he already led the ranking with his three-meter-high, 170-kilo chocolate cyborg elephant, after the Japanese broke their sculpture, and so he continued until the last day. The simplicity of great things was the slogan he chose to define his proposals: "They were very basic and clear things, but well executed and powerful, it was not some crazy idea."

But he also innovated. Hand in hand with the Barcelona-based company I+Desserts, he used enzymes to cover a brioche with banana peel, edible and very tender due to the destructuring effect of these molecules. When he was told he had won, his first feeling was that of "work done after two brutal years," emotional because everything had gone well, seeing that he was surrounded by 80 people, including family and friends, who had come from Vic to see him win.

"From Osona to the world"

To the easy question "and now what?", Crusellas keeps his head on the ground, especially in Osona, where everyone has felt their neighbor's victory as their own. "This 2023, from PaVic, we will consider growing and facing new paths, as long as we can preserve the image, quality, everything. Honestly, we have no need to grow, we are fine as we are, but we are eager," he begins, "we are eager to leave Osona, but always with our feet here. From Osona to the world, as they say."

"We will consider growing and facing new paths, as long as we can preserve the image, quality, everything. We are eager to leave Osona, but always with our feet here"

For now, Crusellas' plan is working and El Carme pastry shop has closed an unprecedented Christmas season, full every weekend of people from Osona but also of customers who came from other parts to buy the cakes of the best in the world, with an average price that is between 5 euros (individual) and 25 euros (large), as well as the line of attractive nougats he has created, with a unit price of about 10 euros. For those looking for the desserts with which he competed in Paris, Crusellas indicates that a few years will have to pass before they can be tasted.