Lukullus – delicious and beautiful pastries from Warsaw

Every time I go to Lukullus, I think that if you're going to eat pastries, you should eat the best. Do you feel that in your case, in difficult times, the lipstick effect is working: if you buy, then buy little, but the best?

Jacek Malarski: The lipstick effect is real. Cakes and cosmetics are good products for difficult times – with something small and inexpensive you can indulge yourself and improve your mood. This principle also proved its worth during the pandemic. At the time, we decided not to deliver cakes. We wanted the walk to the patisserie for a coffee and cake to be an excuse to get out of the house.

Albert Judycki: We believe that if we’re already doing something, we should do it well. We have a climate crisis, difficulties in accessing raw materials, inflation. So what we do has to be valuable. Sometimes when I go into shops and see the mile-long shelves with piles of inedible chocolate, I see those wasted cocoa trees and my heart breaks. So, if we use cocoa, eggs, vanilla, flour, milk, sugar, let's do it with the greatest possible respect for the raw materials.

Like in your book 'Nowe ciastkarstwo' – 'simple, delicious and beautiful'. I’ve written down some bon mots from your book. I also know that Paris and Warsaw merge at your place. For me, Lukullus also has something Japanese. "Work cleanly and gracefully", "clean up after each stage of work as if you were never there". These are simple, accessible and seemingly obvious rules.

J.M.: These are rules that are extremely important, even essential, in a professional patisserie. But they’re also useful in a home environment. If you neglect tidiness, you simply can't work well.

A.J.: France and Japan share a highly developed sensuality and a devout attitude to craftsmanship. Craftsmanship is extremely respected in both countries. Knowledge and experience have been passed down from generation to generation for a long time. In Japan, for example, one of the oldest wooden temples is dismantled every twenty years and reassembled so that certain skills are not lost.

 

Is it different in Poland?

A.J.: Until recently, it was difficult. Craftsmanship was cursed during the communist era because it was associated with bourgeois luxury. Standardisation of production and mass availability were important. The continuity of the transmission of knowledge was also broken because pre-war confectioners, like my grandfather, didn’t pass on the knowledge at a time when many raw materials weren’t available and there were official cake lists.

J.M.: It’s only recently that crafts have returned to favour in our country. People again want to make and buy handmade products. But for craftsmanship to become a craft, it needs to be elevated to the status of everyday excellence. This is difficult and requires time, experience and patience.

Confectionery is also a craft, right?

A.J.: Of course! It’s sometimes said that confectionery is an art. We don't like this term; it seems too high-flown. We like to refer to our profession as a craft, because it's not about inspiration and genius, but about the daily effort we put into our work.

J.M.: A great example is our studio manager Rafał Zarzycki. He’s been working at Lukullus for twenty years and is constantly ready to change, learn and broaden his horizons. He takes the work of a pastry chef seriously, he’s a perfectionist and is happy to share his knowledge. Back in his learning days, he had to count shells in the trash to find out how many eggs his masters used. Back then, that was how the masters approached their students.

Exactly, in colloquial language we talk about something like a secret recipe. And in your book, the recipes are fully presented. Why is that?

J.M.: We felt this was the moment to share what we know and what we can do. So the whole industry can benefit from our knowledge and our experience. When the competition’s better, we’re better. We want our competition to be the best! We then have an impetus to work. Besides, if the whole industry’s strong, everyone benefits: there are cheaper raw materials, better machines, more experienced workers.

Aren't you afraid that someone will steal your recipes?

A.J.: But we want that! You learn the most through imitation. Imitation is the greatest compliment.

J.M.: We know how strong the Lukullus brand is. And we know how many more ideas we have for new cakes. Besides, it’s not in recipes and technology that the secret of a successful business lies. A good business is first and foremost about people who follow the rules and learn from each other every day at work. A good business is a daily struggle for quality.

Besides, these recipes aren’t easy.

A.J.: Making good pastry isn’t easy at all. When you look on Instagram, it might seem that patisserie is a simple, light and fun thing. But it's tedious, monotonous and physically hard work. Fortunately, today it's much friendlier than it used to be. We have equipment that makes life easier: beaters, rolling pins, cream machines. Thanks to these, our profession’s become much more feminised – it used to be a tough job that only men could physically handle.

How long does it take to successfully learn patisserie?

J.M.: It's hard to say, it's different for everyone. Some can master a section of pastry-making in two months, others in six months. From cake making, to baking, to decorating... It's certainly takes several years of learning.

Who’s responsible for coming up with new cakes?

A.J.: The two of us. We deal with the whole company in a very personal way.

J.M.: We don't hire a PR company. We don't have an HR or marketing department. We want our business to have a personal touch.

Do you do a lot of daytime work?

A.J.: When we had extra projects, like opening an ice cream parlour or writing a book, we worked several hours a day, six days a week. And for several months in a row. This year’s been much quieter, because we decided after writing the book to rest a bit and gather strength before our next tasks.

J.M.: The book took a few years out of our lives. We didn't do anything else for a year and a half. This project turned out to be much bigger and more complicated than we thought. Everything was difficult and pioneering. Even writing the book in beautiful Polish proved to be a challenge.

Why?

J.M.: We wanted the book to be written in beautiful language. And that the text – not the photos –should lead the reader step by step through each stage of production. We were inspired by Julia Child's book, which we both consider to be the best cookbook, because it’s the only one where the text leads the reader by the hand even through very complicated and time-consuming recipes.

A.J.: Because very few confectionery books have been published, there’s a lack of language for description. In France, where they publish constantly and a lot, it works on a "copy/paste" basis, because the same sentences are repeated in all the books. In Poland, we have pre-war books whose language is archaic, communist-era books about 'sponge-fat cakes' and health and safety rules, and today books full of awful Anglicisms. For example, the word ‘infusion’ is commonly used instead of ‘napar’. Meanwhile, I’ve found that in Polish it means the introduction of a liquid into the body intravenously, subcutaneously or rectally!

J.M.: So, we replaced ‘infusion’ with ‘napar’, ‘insertion’ with ‘filling’, and 'monoporation with jelly in glasse' with 'art cake with jelly in glaze'. The Polish language is beautiful and will express whatever your head thinks! "Sprinkle generously with pistachio powder" – in Polish it sounds like poetry!

What about after the book? What further projects do you have in mind? Have you thought about other cities?

A.J.: We have no ambitions to grow. We have no plans to expand our sales network. We have even carried out a 'degrowth' in the last few years and reduced the company from nine locations to six. We want to run the business to our size and scale, which is quite large anyway.

J.M.: We certainly don't want to go outside of Warsaw. Opening shops in other cities would mean a loss of quality. We have had proposals, but the truth is that it’s not possible to deliver fresh baked goods from Warsaw to Krakow, for example, or to fully control the quality in a separate studio somewhere on site when we’re here every day. It's our considered decision, a sensible business decision.

A.J.: And not only is it prudent, it's also romantic. The patisserie is from Warsaw. I’ve been a Varsovian since I was born, Jacek consciously chose this city. We love Warsaw. We’re simply a Warsaw patisserie.

Which recipes are the most traditional and Varsovian?

J.M.: All baked or fried pastries. For example, Old Polish poppyseed cake, Warsaw doughnuts or baba mousseline.

When I think Lukullus, I think butter. Maybe it's the yellow colour?

A.J.: That's exactly right! When we did the rebranding fifteen years ago, we asked Wika Wojciechowska to work with us. It was a time when we advertised with the slogan 'Traditionally on butter'. And at the first meeting Wika was thinking out loud: "Butter, butter... If butter, then yellow!". And that's how it stayed, we just changed the shade to light and cold instead of warm, yolky. By a twist of fate, it's also the colour of the Warsaw flag!

Here's a quote from your book: “You have the best and most enjoyable profession in the world, but don't rest on your laurels. You can always do better". Is that a principle you follow in your own work?

A.J.: Every Monday we start the working week with the conviction that everything needs to change. We still have the feeling that we’re just starting and that everything is still to come.

J.M.: The principles written down in the book as the Ten Commandments of pastry-making are primarily concerned with the work of pastry and confectioners. We, dealing with all aspects of Lukullus, work according to the rule of three A's: Apple, Audi and 'American Gangster'. The Apple principle – leave only the best in the range and throw out everything that’s average. That's what Steve Jobs did. The Audi principle – make lots of small changes, but often. Audi cars are constantly changing something, be it the cut of the lights or the shape of the grill. In our case, it's adding more vanilla or subtracting sugar, for example. To maintain the same level of satisfaction with customers, we’re constantly changing details. And finally, the 'American Gangster' principle – sell better than the competition and cheaper than the competition. In the film, admittedly, the commodity was drugs, but some say our cakes are addictive too!

And which cake at Lukullus is your favourite?

J.M. and A.J.: Bajaderka!

A.J.: When we introduced it, I ate it every day for weeks!

J.M.: We add a buttery chocolate cream, homemade cherry brandy, cherries from liqueur, rum, lots of chocolate, Dutch cocoa. It's a wonderful Polish cake, and you can call it circular, because you use leftovers from the production of other cakes for it!

Do you feel it’s your mission to promote Polish confectionery so the world and Europe hears about Polish pastries?

A.J.: Absolutely! There are only two countries in the world with such a wealth and variety of pastries: Poland and France. I realised this while studying at Le Cordon Bleu school in Paris. People from different countries asked me what kind of pastries we had in Poland. At first, I wasn't sure what they meant or what I should answer, after all, in Poland we have... all of them! Cakes, tarts, cheesecakes, yeast cakes, doughnuts, puffs, eclairs... Then it dawned on me that this isn’t the case in other countries. Even before the war, Warsaw was famous in Europe for its patisseries, and there were plenty of them!

J.M.: In Poland, we have sugar in our blood. We want to boast about Polish confectionery abroad. We want Lukullus to be a showpiece of Warsaw and Polish confectionery for visitors to our country.

 

 

Lukullus confectionery in Warsaw:

 

52A Mokotowska Street

22/24 Rozbrat Street

32 Chmielna Street

23 Lisowska Street

29 Walecznych

59 Złota Street (Złote Tarasy Centre)

 

Text: Agata Napiórska

Photos: Piotr Czyż