Dominique Ansel facts for kids
Ansel in 2017
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| Born | 1978 (age 45–46) Beauvais, France |
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| Cooking style | French pastry |
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Current restaurant(s)
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Award(s) won
2014 James Beard Awards Best Pastry Chef
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Dominique Ansel (born 1978) is a French pastry chef and owner of Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York City. He is best known for his invention of the Cronut, a croissant-donut hybrid.
Early life
Raised in a working-class family in Beauvais, a small city an hour north of Paris, Ansel is the youngest of four children. To help support the family, he dropped out of school at 16 and worked at a restaurant. He also trained for three years at the free local culinary school, apprenticing as a cook in various local restaurants – first working in savory and then in pastry, gravitating most strongly to the scientific precision of pastry.
At age 19, Ansel did his mandatory year of military service in French Guiana, cooking as part of a community program teaching locals how to cook. When he returned home, he bought a car with his savings and began driving to Paris and dropping off his résumé at bakeries, and quickly got job offers.
Career
In Paris, Ansel worked a year at Pâtisserie Peltier and nearly eight years at Fauchon. In 2006, he moved to the U.S. and served for six years as executive pastry chef at Daniel Boulud's Daniel, a two Michelin star French restaurant in New York City. In 2011, he opened Dominique Ansel Bakery in SoHo, Manhattan.
His invention of the Cronut in 2013 became a widely publicized phenomenon, being named one of Time Magazine's best inventions of the year. In 2014, he unveiled another dessert creation, the Chocolate Chip Cookie Milk Shot, which is a warm chocolate chip cookie molded in the shape of a shot glass and filled with milk.
He was named Best Pastry Chef in the U.S. by the James Beard Awards in 2014.
The World's 50 Best Restaurants awards named Ansel the World's Best Pastry Chef in 2017, at the age of 39. This made him the first pastry chef in America to be bestowed the honor. Other chefs to have won the award include Jordi Roca, Albert Adria, and Pierre Hermé.
In November 2017, he opened Dominique Ansel Bakery Los Angeles, at The Grove. The bakery and restaurant closed permanently in September 2020, following the forced restaurant closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In January 2021, he opened his first shop in Hong Kong, Dang Wen Li by Dominique Ansel.
He opened Dominique Ansel Workshop, a croissant counter inside of his pastry kitchen, in Manhattan's Flatiron District in July 2021.
On October 21, 2022, he opened Dominique Ansel Las Vegas at Caesars Palace.
