Philip Khoury: Raising the Bar on Plant-Based Desserts

Pastry Arts Podcast

Philip Khoury is the award-winning Head Pastry Chef at Harrods in London and the author of the newly released book A New Way to Bake: Re-imagined Recipes for Plant-Based Cakes, Bakes and Desserts (Hardie Grant, 2023). Chef Khoury started his career at Australia’s most awarded restaurant, Quay in Sidney, before becoming Adriano Zumbo’s head of R&D, launching hundreds of patisserie lines in his native Australia. After a number of years spent realizing the food industry’s unsustainable reliance on animal exploitation, he decided to begin tackling an area he had previously thought impossible: vegan pastry. He has launched a collection of plant-based and allergen-friendly patisserie at Harrods, as well as overseeing the production of their iconic made-in-house pastries and desserts. To learn more about Philip or to purchase his book, visit philipkhoury.com.

In this episode we discuss:

• Tasting a Pierre Hermé pastry and realizing he wanted to pursue a career as a pâtissier
• What he learned while working at Quay, Australia’s most acclaimed restaurant
• From production kitchen to R&D at Adriano Zumbo and what he learned there
• How he landed his dream job at Harrods
• What motivated him to become vegan and how he introduced vegan desserts at Harrods
• Writing his first book and sharing a collection of approachable vegan dessert recipes
• Philip’s top tip for making a whipped ganache
• And much more!