Food critic Richard McComb talks to the undisputed Queen of Desserts, Claire Clark.

I am pouring a tasting of Albinao chocolate sauce on to a teaspoon for a woman hailed as one of the planet’s top pastry chefs.

The choc gravy accompanies a saddle of venison and Claire Clark wants to see what it’s like. I’m not easily fazed by reputations and coolly play down the moment.

“Ooo, err,” I say to Clark, who is sitting alongside me inside Aston Villa’s apprentice restaurant, VMF.

“I’m pouring chocolate sauce for one of the top three pastry chefs [insert Jeremy Clarkson Top Gear-style emphasis] in the world.”

Clark swats away the fawning with an engaging smile.

Go on, I tell her, she must be aware of the catering industry hype that has elevated her to the status of kitchen superstardom. How does she feel about her gigantic reputation?

“I don’t look at myself as that person. I don’t have that impression of myself,” says Clark, the modest daughter of a vicar.

“If you talk to most people who know me they will tell you that what you see is what you get.”

She says she can’t do anything about the reputation others have created for her, adding: “If you put yourself on a pedestal you are going to get knocked off.”

Jabbing her finger vigorously, Clark plays the part of a cynic, mocking herself: “Who are you? Who do you think you are?”

If she can’t escape the limelight in the world’s top kitchens, that’s not her fault. “In the trade everyone knows who I am. If you ask a five-star hotel chef or Michelin chef about Claire Clark, they say, ‘Oh, I know her.’ But if you ask a housewife, the man on the street, they won’t know me.”

In the two occasions I have met Clark (the other was during her nine-month pastry consultancy at the legendary Sandy Lane in Barbados), she has struck me as notably unstarry, despite working for, and winning unqualified praise from legends of modern cuisine including American Tom Keller, for whom she worked at the revered three Michelin star The French Laundry in California.

In fact, she appears to revel in the anonymity afforded to her outside the hot-house world of global gastronomy. Her two-day visit to Villa Park, the home of Aston Villa FC, is part of her role as a roving ambassador for catering supplier Cheese Cellar, which is expanding its patisserie collection.

Cheese Cellar has a base in Worcester and is a key supplier of luxury Valrhona chocolate to top hotels and restaurants.

VMF, Villa’s innovative training restaurant for unemployed local catering talent, is the latest focus of Clark’s attention.

Working alongside head chef Richard Dutton and pastry chef Craig Gent, she has created a three-course “chocoholics” menu. Dutton is largely responsible for the first two dishes while Clark works closely with Gent to make a sensational platter of five chocolate desserts. Gent attests to Clark’s tireless quest for pudding perfection.

“We spent 10 hours on the chocolate yesterday,” says Gent. “It’s been an absolutely incredible experience to work with Claire.”

A starter of salmon delice comes with a white chocolate and lemon sauce, asparagus and green peppercorns. A combination of chocolate and fish would usually send me running for the hills but Valrhona’s Ivorie chocolate, containing 35 per cent cocoa, is less sweet than one might expect and works surprisingly well, with notes of vanilla and light creaminess.

The choice of mains includes a Mexican-style supreme of chicken with Mole Negro and chilli sauce, parsnip puree, wilted spinach and rosti potato.

The sauce, incorporating nutmeg, cloves and chilli, uses Guanaja (70 per cent cocoa) chocolate. The sauce for the venison has an “extra bitter” Abinao, whose whopping 85 per cent cocoa screams of intensity and lingering tannins.

Clark explains how the Abinao is made with a blend of Forastero cocoa beans bought from small farms in Africa.

“It has a very earthy flavour to it. The chocolate is strong and works well with venison and other game dishes,” she says.