Chef Biography
Born in 1968 in Rouen, France, Sebastien Canonne started his culinary career in 1983 at age 15 and enrolled at the École Hôteliere de Rouen, near Normandy. Two years later, he apprenticed at the renowned pastry shop, Gaston Lenôtre, to specialize in sugar sculpting. He then went down to Burgundy to work under Great Chef Michel Lorain and his three-star La Côte St. Jacques. In 1987 he moved to Switzerland, first to the legendary Beau Rivage Palace in Lausanne, and later at the Hotel Palace Euler in Basel.
In the early 1990s, he returned to France to work at the Palais de L’Élysée for French President Francois Mitterrand in Paris. In 1994, the Great Chefs television crew caught up with him at the Chicago Ritz-Carlton where he was the executive pastry chef. They taped him for the Discovery Channel’s Great Chefs of America television series.
In 1995, Chef Sebastien Canonne, along with Great Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer, founded the French Pastry School in Chicago that is considered today as one of the leading pastry institutions in the world.