Best Pastry Chefs

Carrie Summer
RESTAURANT: Spoonriver
YEARS IN PASTRY: 20
FAVORITE SWEET: Warm cake doughnuts, baklava

Carrie Summer has some of the country’s best-known restaurants on her résumé: She worked at Morimoto and Jo Jo in New York before moving to the new Cue in 2006. Summer joined Brenda Langton, Lisa Carlson, and Liv Benser at Spoonriver last winter, a perfect fit considering Summer’s natural hankering for combining elements on a plate in a modern style. Her vibe stops just short of experimental, but she’s a classicist at heart. Check out her chicory-chocolate cream and sake apricots, the tofu cheesecake with prickly pear géleé and candied wolfberries, the olive oil–and–yogurt almond cake with berries and yogurt ice cream, the cardamom bête noire with cocoa-nib brittle. Summer serves up her famous mini doughnuts at the Mill City Farmers’ Market and is planning holiday creations such as pumpkin doughnuts, a modern take on crèpes suzettes (perhaps with banana), and a fruit pot pie. 750 S. 2nd St., Mpls., 612-436-2236

Khanh Tran
RESTAURANT: Cosmos at Graves 601 Hotel
YEARS IN PASTRY: 10
FAVORITE SWEET: Warm beignets and Vietnamese chicory coffee

Khanh Tran is a familiar name to sweet freaks. She was pastry chef at Auriga, then Turtle Bread Company, and Levain. Tran is a restaurant baby—her family founded Lotus Vietnamese restaurant in Minneapolis, but she got her formal education at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. Tran also attended the acclaimed Ecole de Gastronomie Française in Paris, staying on for an apprenticeship at the Ritz–Escoffier Hotel. She is in love with contrasts: hot-cold, salty-sweet, crisp-soft. But her real trump card is the well-played joker—avocado custard or buttermilk sorbet with a basil géleé. She puts white pepper ice cream with smoked hot chocolate; spiced figs and salted almond praline are elements in a chocolate-tart composition. For the holiday season, she’s going with homey—think brown-butter cake and citrus fruits or tropicals paired with nut flavors. 601 1st Ave. N., Mpls., 612-312-1168

Michelle Gayer
RESTAURANT: La Belle Vie and Solera
YEARS IN PASTRY: 17
FAVORITE SWEET: Ice Cream

Michelle Gayer is the most acclaimed pastry chef living in the Twin Cities. The former pastry queen at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago cowrote Charlie Trotter’s Desserts and has worked with Nancy Silverton of La Brea Bakery, so she is as at home with the exotic and experimental as she is the rustic and classical—she also teaches at Le Cordon Bleu. In 2002, she received a James Beard Best Chef nomination and a year later was named Best Pastry Chef by the editors of Bon Appetit. She has just come out of restaurant retirement to take over the pastry program at Solera and, more prominently, La Belle Vie. Her La Belle Vie menu is not set, but she’s working on a more natural approach with a simplicity she believes is the way the pendulum is about to swing. That said, she will also be incorporating savory flavors such as olive oil and herb infusions. For the holidays, all she’s promising is lots of browned butter. 510 Groveland Ave., Mpls., 612-874-6440