Frank Haasnoot opens a patisserie on Rotterdam's Zwaanshals

Frank Haasnoot, who won the World Chocolate Masters in Paris in 2011, has opened a patisserie of his own on the Zwaanshals in Rotterdam-Noord. FH Pâtissier & Chocolatier opened on Tuesday 3 November, next to Bakkit, the bakery and coffee bar Haasnoot already runs on the same street, De Buik van Rotterdam reports.

It is a small, minimalist shop with a dark interior and no seating: you come here for tarts, chocolates and pastries to take home. Haasnoot believes the city had room for it. Rotterdam has plenty of good bakers, he told De Buik, but he saw a gap for refined patisserie and chocolate work.

What Frank Haasnoot sells on the Zwaanshals

Rotterdam has plenty of good bakers, but he saw a gap for refined patisserie and chocolate work.

The range changes with the seasons and with whatever fruit and ingredients are at their best. Frank Haasnoot makes new pieces during the day so that everything in the display case is as fresh as possible. One fixture is a tart that goes back to his winning creation of 2011: milk chocolate with mandarin, yuzu and hazelnut, on a chocolate sponge with a crunchy hazelnut layer.

Prices and opening hours are not online yet. The shop's website describes the concept as built entirely around luxury patisserie, chocolate and refined creations, with categories running from chocolates and cakes to plated desserts and chocolate sculptures.

If you want to keep eating your way through the city afterwards, our guide to what to eat in Rotterdam lists nine dishes and the addresses where you can find them.

From world champion in Paris to a shop in Noord

Haasnoot spent years working abroad, in luxury hotels and pastry kitchens in New York, Kuwait, Taiwan and Hong Kong. When he took the world title at the Salon du Chocolat in Paris in 2011, he was executive pastry chef at Dobla, a Dutch maker of chocolate decorations. He wrote the trade books Prisma and Whip and has long earned his living from masterclasses, consultancy and training for other professionals.

With Bakkit, a place built around croissants, specialty coffee and creative bakery products, Frank Haasnoot already had a foothold in Rotterdam-Noord. The new shop is the step from consultant to a display case under his own name. The moment he does it for, he told De Buik, is the one at home with the box: you buy with your eyes, but the real test starts when you sit down at the table.

The Zwaanshals now has two businesses from the same pastry chef a few metres apart: croissants and coffee behind one door, chocolate and tarts behind the other. Whether Noord buys that kind of refinement on an ordinary Tuesday is something the winter months will show.