Carmen Rueda: Sweet Storyteller

Carmen Rueda’s Desserts Tantalize the Mind as Well as the Stomach

In the world of pastry, where technique is measured to the millimeter and aesthetics often set the pace, there are professionals who go far beyond: those who transform sweetness into language and create each dessert to evoke tangible emotions. Carmen Rueda is part of a new generation of pastry chefs who see the kitchen not only as a space for creativity, but also as a form of intimate dialogue with those who experience it.

With precise sensitivity, a refined aesthetic and endless curiosity, Rueda has built a world of her own where every flavor has intention and every texture tells a story.

From a rural town in Salamanca in the Northwestern part of the Iberian Peninsula, she studied in Madrid and then pastry in Barcelona, before venturing abroad to work in seven countries and show off her skills in some of the world’s great restaurants, including El Bulli in Girona, Spain, The Fat Duck in Bray, U.K., 2 am Dessert Bar in Singapore and her current home at Brix, in Dubai, U.A.E., where she serves as Executive Pastry Chef. Earlier this year, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants named Rueda the Best Pastry Chef in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa region), as she continues to soar.

In this interview, she shares her vision of contemporary pastry, her inspirations, her travels and the vital impulse that leads her to turn ingredients into unforgettable memories.

You originally started in the savory world. How did you end up studying pastry?

I studied four years of culinary arts for savory [at the Culinary and tourism Institute in Madrid]. I wanted to be a head chef one day. So, I decided to go somewhere where they could teach you the basics of pastry. When I [started an internship in Barcelona], I really fell in love with what we were doing with chocolate, which was magical. I didn’t want to go back to savory. Pastry had found me.

Did you have a favorite chocolate dessert?

It wasn’t a single dessert; it was a feeling of creating. Where I was working, we were making pieces from 80 kilos to centerpieces. To see something so fragile and beautiful come from such a simple ingredient like cocoa was breathtaking. That’s when I realized pastry wasn’t just about taste.

You studied pastry in France for a year and then a year after you came you began working at El Bulli. How did that change your life?

It’s quite hard to put it into words, but being there was the luckiest part of my life. It was such a unique and inspirational place, not from the point of view of what they do, put from the point of view of having full freedom to do things that no one has done before. It’s more like a conceptual place that tells you that you can create, you can be different and it still can work. For me, when you are in school, everyone is teaching you this is the recipe. This is how it’s supposed to work. When you are in a place like El Bulli, it doesn’t matter so much that you follow the rules; there is much more that can be done. Imagination has no limits. At El Bulli for sure it must taste good, but there are no limits to making it a great experience.

What was your favorite thing on the menu at El Bulli?

It’s quite difficult to say because the menu had 43 dishes. In 2006, I was lucky enough to get a table. Then later I was working there. Again, it was a lucky part of my life. It was having textures that you had never experienced before that were full of flavor and made total sense. Just understanding what your palate feels, it’s something that you’ve never had before. This is beautiful, when you think things that you never thought before.

You check many of the best restaurants in the world today, and sooner or later, many of the chefs have been at El Bulli. Everyone there had a different personality. Everyone went there and got inspired. What they did has never been copied. No one copied El Bulli; everyone took inspiration from it and then created something from their own point of view.

You also worked at The Fat Duck [in Bray, U.K.], another one of the world’s great restaurants. How was that different?

It was totally different. I was there two times. At the beginning, I was a normal chef working in the kitchen every day. Then I left to go to Singapore. When I came back, I was the pastry chef in an experimental kitchen. When you become pastry chef of an experimental kitchen, you meet everyone behind the whole story: neurologists, perfumers, magicians, all kinds of people. They give you a perception that makes you think out of the box.

How did you come up with the dessert Counting Sheep?

It was created for the Fat Duck. When I joined the second time, I was creating the menu. So it was more a journey through the story of a child, and how you go from making a day with your family, going to the beach, going through the forest. And we thought we could represent on the menu how after a long day with your family, you go to sleep. The only thing we found that was common to everyone around the world was that they count sheep to go to sleep. For that we wanted to make a multi-sensory dessert that included music, touch, smell. I spoke with a neurologist at Liverpool University. They said that your mood can change by touching a hot cup of coffee or a cold cup of coffee.

So, then I came up with the idea that if you are having a very fluffy spoon covered in feathers, it would give you the feeling of touching your teddy bear. We wanted to create something tender, so we made a dish with the help of a perfumer that smelled like a baby based on all the volatile compounds. Then we created a floating pillow and on top of that, we placed something many people have, especially in the U.K., before you go to sleep: you have a glass of milk and cookies. So we made an aerated meringue with milk ice cream inside. The base was milk mold coconut, but then it had touches of pistachio, bergamot, coriander leaves, every ingredient that composed the perfume based on the volatile compounds. We also had lullabies playing at the table to bring people back to their childhoods.

So where do you find your inspirations and how do you use them to help create your dishes?

In London, I used to go to many museums on the weekends to see the other side of the world. If you only get your inspirations from food, you do the same things all the time. When you are exposed to other things, you are able to create new things.

When I moved to Dubai, they offered me to be the head chef only for desserts. I said yes because this is the dream of almost every pastry chef – having your own restaurant where you can make only desserts. That became Brix Journey. After that, I opened Brix Café which is more for croissants and more conventional desserts. So when I make my menu for Brix journey, I always make a theme. Our menu is not a set menu of eight courses. We always have two menus: one short and one longer. They always have two characteristics.

With the four-course menu, we feature Seasons. Our six-course menu is called The Silk Road. I never take recipes from here and there and try to figure out the story. First, I make the story and then afterwards I make the menu. The story behind The Silk Road is about history since I love history. First, travelers discover China. China discovered the compass. They discovered paper, which was one of the most revolutionary discoveries in history. So we put small notes in the dessert. In China, they have a unique way to make a garden, so this dessert looks like a garden. Then we visit India, and we need to talk about the spices. That dish is very much spice-driven. In India they have a lot of flowers, so the dish [representing India] looks like a rose. The rose is made of pineapple infused with fenugreek. And the soup that we put around it is yogurt with a lot of spices and galangal. We never do traditional things with any desserts.

So how do you describe your style?

Every time I create a dish, I’m always trying to create a feeling. For me, it’s not about creating food. You can have a good crème brulee and this is perfectly fine. But I want people who come to Brix to think things, to feel things. For me to create that feeling, I need to feel it before. So how you feel that is by seeing art, watching a movie, listening to music, going to a museum. When I speak to a neurologist at the university, you understand why your body feels different things and what makes your body react. Based on that, you can create different dishes from a different point of view.

Some people say desserts take them back to their childhoods. Do your desserts do that?

Some of them, yes. It’s the most powerful thing you can have. We have people crying because of that. In my point of view, having childhood memories is sometimes needed to bring people out of their everyday life. For example, here in Dubai, there are people from so many different cultures, so the childhood memories are very different. I’m trying to use other kinds of feelings. For example, I’m talking about seasons. I’m from the mountains, so autumn makes me think of leaves and warmth. When I was a small child, I used to pick up mushrooms. I saw leaves. I made this feeling, so people would understand why there are so many leaves on the plate. The dessert is a mixture between feelings and good techniques.

What are some of your other favorite ingredients, including the unusual ones?

For me, there is no such thing as sweet or savory ingredients. Anything that helps me create or express something is welcome. We use things like truffle, cucumber, fennel and even caviar. They all play a role in shaping an experience.

What is your favorite chocolate?

Valrhona 80 percent. Luckily, Valrhona provides me chocolate of high quality. But in the supermarkets, you can get pretty decent quality. If the chocolate says 80 percent, it tells you they believe in the quality of the chocolate.

If there is a young pastry chef who comes to you to be successful, what would you tell that chef?

For me, there is only one tip. That is to learn, learn and learn. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. I’ve been working in seven countries around the world and I’ve never been afraid to say: how do you do this? If you get to the point where you think you know everything, I believe you are stale. So when I moved to France, the technical spark was totally different than it was in Spain and different than in the U.K. If you believe there is only one way to make things, then you are stopping yourself from learning more. You need to learn as much as possible before reaching your own conclusions.

What do you see in the future?

At the moment, I’m in the place I want to be. I have been working with great chefs around the world, but now I have space to express myself. With the Brix Journey and Brix Café, I like to make desserts in such a way that they are not super sweet, super creamy, super buttery. It’s not that I’m against that, but there is the perception that desserts have to be oversweet and heavy, and we are trying to show that desserts can be nice, light and full of flavor.

(This article appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)