Five Chicago pastry chefs were among the 50 candidates for Food & Wine magazine’s Best Pastry Chef, the first year for a pastry component to the annual Best New Chefs awards. In the end, five pastry chefs were named— and Bryce Caron of Chicago’s Blackbird was among the five winners, alongside Shawn Gawle of Corton in New York, Laura Sawicki of La Condesa in Austin, Stella Parks of Table 310 in Lexington, Kentucky and Devin McDavid of Quince/Cotogna in San Francisco. Online votes were solicited as well and the winner of that poll was Chris Ford of Wit & Wisdom in Baltimore. If you haven’t seen Caron’s work at either Blackbird or Avec (which the pastry kitchen at Blackbird also serves), you can get a better idea of what he’s up to with desserts, although they rarely actually include fish, from the recent Key Ingredient episode in which he adapted a Blackbird dessert to feature Asian carp. Watch it below.
