Tokyo-based patissier Fabrizio Fiorani, who was named Asia's Best Pastry Chef at the Asia's 50 Best Restaurants awards ceremony in Macau on March 26, has always loved tiramisu, the Italian confection of coffee-soaked sponge cake layered with sweetened mascarpone cheese and cocoa powder. It was the first dessert he learned to make, at the age of 14, while working at a gelato shop in his native city of Rome, and it's still the treat he craves most at the end of a long day.
At Bulgari Il Ristorante Luca Fantin, where Fiorani has been the head pastry chef since 2015, some of his most delightful creations are humorous (tiramisu translates, roughly, as "cheer me up") riffs on the dish. Once, he presented it as a glazed cookie precisely cut into the shape of Italy — including the islands of Sardinia and Sicily — alongside a chocolate truffle filled with coffee ganache.
Another time, it came in the form of edible letters spelling out "tiramisu." More recently, he turned it into a pair of faux Groucho Marx glasses, perched atop a red plastic nose and served with mascarpone gelato. The “glasses” were coffee-flavored biscuits dotted with mascarpone cream and covered with a delicate layer of chocolate; he found the plastic nose at a ¥100 discount shop.