Breaking The Pastry Mould

Innovative desserts with Asian touches, cross-cultural flavours and a passion for savoury ingredients make Maira Yeo Asia's best pastry chef.

- Priyanka Elhence

Chilli and coriander in a signature dessert with no traditionally sweet ingredients? It's not a combination that usually comes to mind, but usual flavours and delivering the expected are not the reasons why homegrown talent Maira Yeo was crowned Asia's Best Pastry Chef 2022 by Asia's 50 Best Restaurants.

Yeo's signature (and hugely famous) dessert at Michelin-starred Cloudstreet is nothing short of unusual, eclectic yet extremely well balanced and eye-catching. She transforms the humble celtuce (also known as Chinese lettuce) into a celtuce-yuzu sorbet with confit celtuce cubes, garnished with green chilli and coriander cress cream, and finished tableside with lettuce juice and homemade vanilla oil.

"Ingredients can shine when you apply different techniques. It would be strange if the desserts were to take a very safe and typical approach," says the 30-year-old pastry chef.

Yeo has only been at Cloudstreet for about a year and a half (and counting) yet she has revolutionised the dessert creations at the restaurant, highlighting savoury notes while simultaneously capitalising on the natural sweetness of fruits and vegetables. Her most recent invention takes the form of a delicate quenelle featuring soursop sorbet dusted with kaffir lime leaf powder, juniper berries and jambu. Innovative to say the least.

The kitchen has been Yeo's domain since the young age of six, when she began helping out in her Cantonese-Teochew family's mixed-rice hawker stall, and quickly progressed to being her mother's sous chef for elaborate Chinese New Year feasts. But it was only at the age of 14 that the world of pastry caught her attention. Add her overseas professional stints to the picture, and her resume is impressive.