Netflix puts world’s best pastry chef in a US food truck to serve the average American in new series Chef in a Truck

Francois Perret, who works at the Ritz in Paris, France, made American-inspired desserts with a French twist, such as pear and honey tacos and s’mores

Despite the gulf in food cultures between France and the United States, the chef says ‘we are not all that different from each other’

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Francois Perret – named the world’s best pastry chef in 2019 – gave US dishes a French twist in new Netflix series Chef in a Truck. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:30pm, 12 Jun 2020Updated: 8:30pm, 12 Jun 2020

It sounds like a kind of cruel joke – taking the world’s best pastry chef, who usually cooks for the crème de la crème at the Ritz in Paris in France, and seeing if he can satisfy the sweet tooth of Americans who eat from fast food trucks.

But despite his almost non-existent English, and his equally rudimentary understanding of the simple, unpretentious American palate, Francois Perret was game for the experiment, which was shot for the new Netflix series Chef in a Truck.

So much so that the man who was pronounced the best restaurant pastry chef on the planet last year by the World’s Great Tables, a guide to the world’s best restaurants, even created two US-inspired desserts for the Ritz.

For two weeks, Perret travelled around California, on the west coast of the United States, trying out local treats and tray bakes and then tried to come up with ways to refine them and still please the average American.

The 39-year-old Frenchman says that he loves watching people eat his creations because their expressions “do not lie” – a chance he rarely gets at the Ritz. “It was great to take part in an adventure like this, to be in direct contact with the people who are eating your food,” he says.