Finding sweet dreams in the best patisserie
Grega Božičnik fell in love with desserts when he started making his own pancakes for breakfast in primary school, and later even sold them on stands and enriched his usual marmalade with nutella. This boy has become a wonderful pastry chef, living the sweet dream.
His Fétiche Patisserie in Ljubljana was awarded by Gault&Millau as the best patisserie for the year 2021 and Grega mainly sees this award as recognition for all of the sacrifice he and his team have made in the last years to succeed. “My love for desserts is infinite and I have developed this love because I truly enjoy creating, working and eating well. We have always strived to work with the best ingredients, even if that meant that we were losing money. We always want to offer top quality and have given up a lot to be able to stay on this road. This award means that our efforts have been noticed.”
The efforts and high quality have also been recognised by their guests, many of them regular customers ever since the opening. Grega is happy to see that his guests are outgrowing the classics like Bled cream cake or Prekmurje gibanica. “We have adjusted our desserts to the Slovenian public by adding local flavours to French classics, which is one of the reasons for our success.” He emphasizes that freshness is one of the most important things when it comes to desserts. “Can you imagine a morning croissant that has been baked yesterday? Desserts cannot wait, they need to be fresh all the time.”
Grega is the author of many sweet goodies and he gets help from the Japanese pastry master Hiroki Nakaguru as well as Manca Bogataj, responsible for the vegan part of the offer. “I think that the future of pastry making can be more healthy; we keep on getting new products and ingredients to work with and people keep on asking about vegan desserts, which drives us forward. There is still room for improvement here as well as in the gluten-free area. We always try to do our absolute best and stay true to ourselves.”
