The World’s 50 Best Restaurants ranking has just named Mineko Kato as Asia’s Best Pastry Chef 2024 for her boundary-pushing blend of aesthetics and sustainable ethos.

The Japanese chef began her career honing her skills in the pastry stations of great European kitchens, most notably at Massimo Bottura’s legendary Osteria Francescana in Modena. In 2018, her love for her craft took her back to her roots to join the team at Faro, a restaurant located on the tenth floor of Tokyo’s iconic Shiseido building. There, under the direction of Kotaro Nado, she has transformed the dessert offering, introducing sustainable and visually stunning cakes and sweets.

In so good.. magazine 30, Kato shared the recipe for three groundbreaking creations. Among them was the Satoyama flower tart, a dessert with a delicate vegetal base, filled with vanilla pastry cream and topped with a technicolor bouquet of between 30 and 40 different herbs and wildflowers, which poses a singular question: will the environment of Japan’s Satoyama still exist 50 years from now?