Maru Expert chefs

The courses are taught by working chefs: they spend their days with dough, not only in front of a camera. Each has their own subject — sourdough, laminated pastry, desserts, coffee — and inside the course they answer students’ questions themselves.

Ekaterina Kurbatova

Ekaterina Kurbatova

Award-Winning Pastry Chef & Founder of Maru.expert

  • Practising master pastry chef, author of every course of the school
  • Trained at the International Pastry School of Olivier Bajard, France — the course “Complex cakes and pastries”
  • Certified courses with Nina Tarasova, Tatiana Verbitskaya, Patrick Casula, Quentin Bailly
  • Founded the Maru.expert pastry academy
“I know the difficulties modern pastry chefs run into — so I combined the experience of world masters with technological secrets from my own practice.”
Mikhail Tsiukhtsiayeu

Mikhail Tsiukhtsiayeu

Certified SCA trainer. Author of the Kitchen Coffee Roasters project.

  • Certified SCA teacher in Sensory Skills — coffee sensory analysis
  • Founder of Kitchen Coffee Roasters in Minsk and Vilnius; with his team opened the first brew bar in the history of Minsk
  • Studied with Ida Steen of CoffeeMind, the author of the coffee sensory analysis course
  • Studied with Agnieszka Rojewska, the 2018 World Barista Champion
  • Took Q-Grading with Gloria Pedroza — 21 years in the coffee industry
  • Trained the coaches of his own barista school in Belarus
Elena Konetskaya

Elena Konetskaya

Macaron & Pastry Instructor, Maru.expert

  • Teacher at the Maru.expert pastry school
  • Extensive experience making macarons and mousse desserts to order
  • Trained on the courses of Vera Nikandrova, Olga Van-Yung and Hans Ovando