Get ready, London — the cronut’s creator is coming to town. talks banoffee in Belgravia with Dominique Ansel

“There is this energy in New York that I really love, and the pace and the people and so many things were the same as London,” he continues. “But of course it’s different — I think London is a lot more charming, and I’m excited to be a part of it.”

He has inspired spin-off creations around the world (ever heard of the cro-dough or dosant?) and his good looks combined with 270,000 Instagram followers mean there is a permanent queue outside his NY bakery. So you’d think, perhaps, that Ansel could be a twerp. Instead he is gentle, thoughtful and disbelieving of his success.

He also owns the Dominique Ansel Kitchen in New York, plus an outlet in Japan. The Belgravia bakery will be bigger than his New York original, and “of course” the Cronut will feature, alongside some special London confections.

London, he thinks, “is so rich with so many different cultures, so it’s important to look at the food scene as a whole, how people eat and what they eat”.

The new menu will include a Welsh rarebit croissant with a beer béchamel which Ansel says “came out well — it’s good for breakfast”, as well as a banoffee paella, “because Spanish cuisine is really wellrepresented in London and I wanted to build a banoffee pie inside a paella pan on top of caramelised bananas”, and a caramelised millefeuille dosa.

“I love Indian cuisine and I’ve always been fascinated by how thin and delicate the dosa is,” he says. “But this one’s going to take a little while to develop.” He smiles.

The Cronut, meanwhile, is still