Nina Métayer

Nina Métayer is one of the most decorated pastry chefs of her generation and the founder of Délicatisserie, a pioneering made-to-order digital pâtisserie she launched during the pandemic. Born in La Rochelle, France, and trained at the prestigious École Ferrandi in Paris, she first fell in love with baking through the simple ritual of making galettes charentaises with her grandmother. That early joy became the foundation of a career that has redefined what pastry can be, and who can lead it.

Today, Métayer is the first woman to be named World’s Best Pastry Chef by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, and the first woman awarded the UIBC World Pastry Chef title. Through Délicatisserie, she continues to create with joy, precision, and a deep sense of artistry.

For Métayer, confidence and mastery don't appear overnight. Instead, they grow from repetition and persistence. "Craftmanship can be learned. Creativity can be learned," she says. "I believe the best professionals are not the fastest, but those with the perseverance to start over, to fall and get back up, to fail and keep going."

The path to mastery is inseparable from mistakes. But Métayer sees mistakes not as failures, but as lessons, approached with tenderness and curiosity rather than shame. "The more mistakes you make, the more you learn,” she says. “But you have to learn from every mistake. Every mistake has to be useful." For her, this repetition is not tedium but the very definition of craft. “That’s what craft is,” she says. “It’s repeating the gesture, so it can be multiplied and made into something greater.”

Excellence in any craft requires focus and consistency, yet women often face additional challenges, as societal expectations encourage them to put others first. In a male-dominated industry, Métayer knows this struggle well. She recalls facing prejudice but never letting it deter her. She believes that women can shape their own destiny, and it begins with self-trust and self-care. "If we take care of ourselves, we can care for others,” she says “And if we care for others, we'll radiate outwards."

Taking charge isn't just about resolve, but also about owning your potential. As Métayer sees it, this means refusing external limitations. For her, true boundaries are the ones she set herself, not dictated by others, allowing freedom to pursue ambitions fully. “When I succeed with one project, it means I’ve tried 25 others alongside or that 25 are still in progress,” she says. “I always have many dreams, many projects.”

"Between my professional life and my personal life, I have one life," she admits. Together with her husband, family, and friends, she runs Délicatisserie, which started as an online patisserie during the COVID-19 pandemic and has since expanded to locations at Printemps du Goût in central Paris and in Issy-les-Moulineaux.

Today, the business produces around 1,000 desserts a day on weekdays and up to 2,000 a day on weekends, a level of demand that reflects how quickly Délicatisserie has grown from an experiment into a thriving pâtisserie brand. Métayer notes that customer enthusiasm has continually exceeded expectations, turning her made-to-order model into a highly successful operation built on quality and minimizing waste through produce-on-demand.

Anyone pursuing excellence is at risk of facing burnout along the way. Métayer sees the pastry kitchen as a metaphor for a long, demanding career, where some processes cannot be rushed. “The beginning of this career, of becoming a pastry chef, was really important,” she says. “At every stage, you wonder, will I be a good professional? There’s always the concern for detail, for doing the job well, for how I can do better next time. What do I need to improve? That constant questioning.”

Her first professional failure crystalized this lesson. "I was too impatient,” she says. “You have to let a cake set. It takes time, you have to let it rest." She realized then that in her craft, just as in professional growth, some processes cannot be compressed, sometimes slowing down is what the situation really calls for.

Métayer’s discipline and self-care are guided by a higher purpose of bringing joy and connection through her creations. She aspires "to give little pieces of happiness and to send small moments of joy here and there," which she considers her life's mission. That philosophy is embodied even in the most elemental ingredients. “Water, flour and salt,” she says. “Three extremely simple ingredients that, when mixed together bring life and it’s magic.”

This purpose starts internally, as her creations must first touch her emotionally before she can convey that feeling to others. In the end, her pastries achieve their highest purpose by acting as the object that connects conversations, laughter, and the joy of life at every table.

Ultimately, the goal of any disciplined path is to acquire a value that is permanent and inviolable. Métayer believes that the greatest reward is not a single achievement, but the knowledge and experience gained through effort and resilience.

For her, experience is the most valuable asset in her profession. Through hard work and steady growth, a person develops a strength that cannot be taken away. This enduring confidence becomes the truest form of self-trust, earned through persistence and carried forward to shape one’s path and future. “And it’s thanks to that that I had to work really hard,” she reflects. “And working hard meant making many mistakes. And every time, I had to find the solution to those mistakes, understand where they came from, climb step by step, and gain that experience which can’t be taken away from you. Experience is the most valuable thing we have in our profession.”