#11 | ANDRÉA ROCAGEL, FOUNDER OF LUNA PASTRY

Welcome to POING FORT, the podcast that will give you the weapons of self-confidence. In this first season, 10 guests remove the mask to speak frankly to us about the failures and doubts they had to overcome to achieve their ambitions.

Leaving everything to become a pastry chef in Hong Kong is the crazy gamble that Andréa Rocagel, founder of LUNA patisserie, took.

Enrolled in Fine Arts, she was predestined for a career as an artist, when everything changed. In a medical impasse, she fights to find a solution. After graduating, she decided to join her aunt in Hong Kong on a whim. There, she discovered restaurant concepts adapted to her new dietary constraints.

MARGAUX: Introduce yourself in your own words!

ANDREA: My name is Andrea. I founded Luna, which is a pastry brand, 4 years ago now. I studied fine arts. I always wanted to do fine arts. I have always been truly creative at heart. I grew up manual, doing lots of things, being very curious, experimenting without knowing where it would lead me. It really has always been my identity. Pastry arrived a little by chance in my life.

DOUBLE KIRA RING AND ITO FIST RING

MARGAUX: What led you to change your life?

ANDREA: There was an event that was quite complicated for me. When I started my studies at the Beaux-Arts, I was hardly at school because I was really, really sick. I was in a medical wandering.

Right after graduation, I joined my aunt who has been living in Hong Kong for 30 years. I was leaving for a month but Hong Kong transcended me. There, I started baking differently, making gluten-free cakes. I had done my little experiments during the last years at school.

KIRA EAR SCULPTURE

MARGAUX: During these two years [in charge of the pastry of a local restaurant], how did you learn about plant-based pastry?

ANDREA: What was interesting about Hong Kong was that I had everything to learn. I didn't have any training. I was just asked to make a list of what I needed. I had no idea. So, I really had to learn the whole basics: how you manage a professional kitchen, with hygiene, stocks, product rotation, production, managing teams...

Making vegan, gluten-free, no-bake cakes, suitable for a restaurant, which fit into a cost grid, I didn't know how to do. There weren't really any books, there's no cake bible. So I educated myself a lot on American blogs to understand how these cakes work. There was a big creative part in Hong Kong which really allowed me to understand where I was, what I could do, what I couldn't do.

KIRA OPEN RING