Eunji Lee's Showstopping Pastries Blend Korean Flavors and a Passion for Fine Art

If you ever needed proof that manifestation works, just take a look at the notebook of 18-year-old Eunji Lee. “I wrote that I hoped to open an edible gallery one day,” says Lee. “My mom still has the notebook.” In 2022, the pastry chef opened the doors to Lysée in New York City’s Flatiron District. In many ways, the two-story space is exactly as teenage Lee envisioned: The top floor, with its soaring ceilings and dramatically minimalist white space, feels like a museum. A selection of Lee’s stunning pastries — from a crispy stacked mille-feuille oozing with thick vanilla cream and sticky caramel to a mesmerizing pile of conjoined croissants, dubbed the Full Moon, whose laminated layers coil around each other — is displayed along the back wall and on a long table that cuts across the space. They all look like delicate works of art that are too pretty to eat, but they manage that rare feat of tasting even better than they look. Downstairs at ground level sits the full-service dining area dotted with light oak chairs. You can order any of the pastries from upstairs to go, plus a whole other selection of pastries including moist cakes electrified with yuzu (or yuja in Korean) and tender brioche bursting with a black sesame cream, as well as nonalcoholic beverages like a comforting latte made with brown rice–infused milk and buckwheat hot chocolate.

Lysée is much more than an edible gallery, or a pastry museum, or whatever else one might want to label it. It ultimately is Lee’s love letter to the intersection of her Korean upbringing, her French pastry training, and her adopted home of New York City. You can see it in the physical space, which features an original wooden window frame, as well as wooden pillars from an old Korean house. Her staff is always dressed in pristine white shirts, inspired by French restaurant staff wearing chef’s whites — a tradition Lee found charming during her time working in upscale kitchens in France. The synergy is even more obvious in her menu: The signature mousse cake, for example, is inspired by the shape of Korean roof tiles. It’s made of a wonderfully creamy, nutty mousse flavored with toasted Korean brown rice and vanilla beans that is set on top of a base of pecan sablé (she fell in love with the nut after moving to America) and brown rice caramel.

Then there is her iconic corn dessert, a clever pastry made to look like a perfect ear of corn. It’s one of the best (and most delicious) expressions of trompe l’oeil I’ve seen crafted out of pastry. Lee loves corn — it’s an ingredient she grew up on, and she wanted to create a dessert that celebrated it. To do so, she layers corn mousse and corn crémeux onto a tender corn cake, then creates individual kernels, made from a grilled corn ganache (“for extra corn flavor!” says Lee) that is piped on by hand. The result is an incredibly charming treat with sweet-but-not-too-sweet multidimensional corn flavor. (The shop sells about 350 corn desserts each week.)

It’s not surprising that art plays such a major role in Lee’s approach to pastry. She grew up in Seoul with two art-devoted parents who would take her to galleries and museums, and she always had crayons in her hands as a child. Her obsession with pastry began when she was a teenager: At the age of 14, Lee stumbled across a Korean TV program about a pastry chef and found herself mesmerized. “I loved how the customers became so happy after eating the desserts,” she recalls. Lee was certain from that moment on that being a pastry chef was the path for her.

It was at Jungsik that she had the opportunity to start really playing around with Korean ingredients and combining them with French techniques, something she’d been dreaming of doing for years. In June 2022, she opened the doors to her own spot — Lysée. Now that the shop has been in business for over a year, Lee is thinking of ways to expand the ways customers can experience the space. She recently launched a wine program and is offering dessert and wine pairings, and she hopes to serve cocktails in the future. She is determined to do more plated desserts and dessert tasting menus at night. Though Lee now manages a staff of 15, she still loves working the chef’s counter at the restaurant, where she can see people’s reactions. “Through my desserts I can give a small moment of happiness,” Lee says. “I want to bring this to as many people as possible.”