The Sweet Side

Photos by Nora Hamade and Maggie Lam.
“I find in pastry there’s more artistry — you can play a bit more,” says Kate Siegel (top right), executive pastry chef at the Fairmont Pacific Rim, where she oversees the dessert programs for Botanist and Lobby Lounge as well as in-room dining and banquets.
“I’m a bit of a perfectionist and that speaks to me. It’s also a way more hands-on technical skill that you over the years very much develop a feel for. Once you develop a feel for it, you can play a bit more.”
The ice cream sandwich on the right is made of a caramel-miso ice cream threaded with gloriously gooey bits of caramel, tucked inside an almond shortbread biscuit, finished with white chocolate and stamped with the restaurant’s logo. And it took Jungle Room pastry chef Mariko Foster weeks to get it just right.
“The amount of times I have to redo a recipe to get it perfect,” Foster says, without finishing her sentence. “But when I get it perfect, it’s a real achievement.”