Photo: Mandy Pan

Dimitri Fayard will be serving up sweets as the new pastry chef for the Peninsula Hotel. 

The Peninsula Hotel (108 E. Superior St., 312-337-2888), one of the last bastions of fine dining in hotels, has named a new pastry chef: Dimitri Fayard, who cofounded Vanille Pâtisserie (2229 N. Clybourn Ave., 773-868-4574) and was the opening pastry chef at the Sofitel Water Tower.

He takes over desserts for The Lobby, Shanghai Terrace, Pierrot Gourmet, and room service. Fayard will team with Lee Wolen, the head chef for savories.

“We’ve started to collaborate a little bit on the menu,” Fayard says. “We wanted our two cuisines to match.” He has already introduced two new desserts, one a raspberry-lychee sorbet with mandarin-orange cream.

The other is chocolate cremeux and chocolate hazelnut crumble with a chocolate sponge cake and chocolate ice cream and lemon gêlée.

How’d that last ingredient get in there?