Thiago Silva runs SALT Patisserie at 792 Beacon Street in Newton, Massachusetts — French-trained, Brazilian-born, doing modern pastry in a Boston suburb that does not know what hit it.
His 2018 weapon was a chocolate layer cake, which is the dish that separates pastry chefs from cooks who happen to bake. The cake itself is a chemistry exam — cocoa bloomed in hot coffee, oil and buttermilk for the crumb, eggs whipped to ribbon for lift — and the assembly is engineering. Each layer gets brushed with a soaking syrup so it stays moist at room temperature. Each layer of buttercream gets a half-hour chill before the next cake goes on, so the stack doesn't slide.
Bobby's, per the broadcast, was a cake. Silva's was The Cake. The article keeps coming up in pastry rounds.