Best of Boston

Brian Mercury can do it all. He has to, as the pastry powerhouse for Will Gilson’s trio of restaurants under a single roof in Cambridge. There’s the butter-burnished, braided garlic bread at the Italian-inflected Geppetto, the elegant slices of Taza Chocolate cream pie at rooftop lounge the Lexington, and the genius brunch breads (like the crunchy maple kouign-amann) at Café Beatrice — all of which prove Mercury to be highly malleable, and always in his element.