Jason Licker: the celebrity pastry chef who doesn’t like desserts despite having a ‘massive sweet tooth’ as a child
- He was supposed to become an English teacher, but found his calling in the kitchen after tragic personal loss
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When did you start baking? “My mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was 19. We were typical American big eaters, and she wanted to have sweets even though she was on a special diet, so we started baking together and using healthy alternatives.
“I was supposed to become a high school English teacher but when my mother passed away, I finished my university degree, then enrolled in the French Culinary Institute [in New York] when I was 21. Then I went to Jean-Georges restaurant and after I said I’d work for free, chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten said, ‘OK, come in tomorrow.’ After three weeks, and one run-in where he yelled at me, someone quit. And then I had my first paying job, at US$8.75 an hour at his restaurant in Trump Tower.”
What’s your favourite dessert? “I actually don’t eat dessert. It’s because when I was young I was the fat kid. I had a massive sweet tooth. No doughnut was safe around me. I was obsessed with food, like cookies and candy bars. There’s a peanut butter cookie called Nutter Butter – I could eat 40. Then I’d have Nesquik as a chocolate milk chaser.
“My mom wasn’t a good cook, so we ordered takeout a lot. We constantly ate junk food. Now I am completely over sweet things. I’ll taste a little bit of everything I make to make sure everything is on point, but I like savoury food, even though I don’t know how to cook any of it.”
As someone who doesn’t like sweet things, why did you choose to be a pastry chef? “I like how pastry is a completely different discipline than cooking savoury food. Since I grew up fat and eating super-sweet things, I liked how working in pastry you could balance your palate using salty, sweet, sour and bitter flavours.”