Nine Hours at Lysée, New York’s Singular Fine Art Dessert Gallery

Even though I thought I arrived early, just after 9 a.m., I hear that the chefs started well before sunrise, already beginning to apply finishing touches, like gold leaf, that are tweezered on the V.I.C. (Very Important Chocolate Cake).

I find many of the chefs downstairs, behind a single set of double Dutch doors that leads into a small, boxy back-of-house, densely populated by pastry chefs waiting for countless columns of kitchen timers to go off in syncopation. Check to see how the brioche bread is proofing … Time to take the sablés out of the oven … De-pan the madeleines. A lengthy rectangular pale marble island dominates the small kitchen, which takes up much of the room. It’s perfect for chocolate work, and is the sole work surface for everything else, from cutting croissant triangles to slicing slivers of housemade citron preserves.

Pastry cook Sungjin Lee is making a limited edition galette des rois (king cake), one of many desserts that’s not only seasonal, but ephemeral in its appearance. For the finishing touch, he places a large chocolate ganache frisbee over the layers of flaky, buttery puff pastry, using a hot air gun to heat it slightly until it drapes over the edges. Finally, a handful of chocolate sablé cookie crumbs are scattered on top, adhering to the softened ganache.

While he’s doing this, I hear the familiar sounds of pastry kitchens, which always have a soundtrack composed of the clattering of stainless-steel drawers; they’re a gearhead’s wonderland: whisks and offset spatulas, handheld immersion blenders, and infrared thermometers for tempering chocolate.

“In Korea, corn snacks are enjoyed around 3 to 4 p.m.,” Lee tells me, reminiscing about the steamed or grilled corn on the cob her mother and grandmother used to make for her. Corn has found a place of prominence at Lysée, too, with more than 50 cobs shucked in the kitchen there every day, an extension of Korea’s profound fascination with corn’s sweet-savoriness, which was bolstered by an influx of canned goods during the 1950s. Lee’s “Corn” has become emblematic of Lysée. Here, a corn mousse cake is fabricated to look like a squat ear of fresh corn. The pastry highlights fresh, roasted, buttered, and dehydrated applications, exhibiting the humble ingredients’ versatility. “Corn is not super intense by itself; I didn’t want to use any other ingredients than corn to reinforce the flavors,” Lee explains.

Each morning, Lee and her team choose an exemplary rendition of each pastry, plate it, and display it in the gallery of the second-floor café. At first glance, they seem like classic French pastries, but they’re filled with Korean culture, made for and admired by metropolitan sophisticates.

A cluster of custom boxes gets bundled and bought as coveted gifts to go in the upstairs café. They’re constructed as quickly as customers come … soon enough, a queue starts to form, with some customers coming as far as Korea and France, while many others live in the neighborhood and are regulars, picking up their gâteaux de voyage for the road.

Chefs (from left to right: pastry cook Sungjin Lee, sous chef Sihyeon Ha, and sous chef Annie Lee) do a deep clean of the countertop surface and its surroundings every morning from 11:00 to 11:30 a.m. After lunch, they do a quick check-in before starting prep again for the afternoon.

Executive sous chef Annie Lee pipes the Lysée Korean toasted brown rice mousse into custom silicone molds from Paris, which she forcefully tamps down so that there are no air pockets before she layers on the other ingredients.

Lee uses a ribbon piping tip to create a ripple effect on the V.I.C. (Very Important Chocolate Cake), which stems from Lee’s love of American steakhouses. The dish is a massive multi-layered chocolate cake, striated with a decadently dark chocolate crémeux atop a dozen or so sponge cake levels. A tingly timut pepper caramel provides a contrast or at least conjures conversation. The V.I.C. comes in personal and shareable, larger-format sizes, as do the Lysée and Corn.

Every chef loves organization of some sort. Lysée’s kitchen has to-go tubs filled with finishing touches, from hand-chopped chocolate sablé crumbs (used to top the Pain Au Chocolat 2.0), carrot chips, and chocolate plaques, which become canvases for personalized greetings (e.g. happy birthday, happy anniversary).

Any excess chocolate used to form the teddy bear chocolate mold is knocked out, leaving behind a thin, teddy bear–shaped shell.

Lee works service in a front-of-house/back-of-house position, greeting guests downstairs, coming out from behind the pass to touch tables and talk — bringing a welcome openness to the open kitchen window.

Lysée’s logo (and signature dessert) resembles a giwa, or traditional Korean roof tile. The piping pattern seen on the V.I.C. is supposed to emulate this idea, too.

I leave Lysée with the realization that Lee is the embodiment of Lysée — and it’s rare we get to see retrospective on display in real time.