Adrian Vasquez, the longtime pastry chef at Providence, is leaving the restaurant where he's been since 2006. We knew this. We also know that Vasquez is not just any pastry chef. To quote, as we are wont to do, The Weekly's Jonathan Gold: “The dessert tasting menu of pastry chef Adrian Vasquez is a five-course degustation demanding and ambitious enough to command the attention of an entire evening, a universe of puréed avocado and hot cider foam.”

Vasquez is headed not to another restaurant, but to Boston, where his family is relocating. As for the pastry kitchen at Michael Cimarusti's Melrose Avenue restaurant, Vasquez says that we can expect something quite different, depending on his successor. “I don't agree with institutional memory,” emailed Vasquez.

“And I'd like think the next pastry chef will want to establish themselves with their own desserts.” This from a man who once called chocolate sauce, when we called him up to ask for a recipe, too “pedestrian.” As for whether Cimarusti has found anyone to fill Vasquez' flour-dusted clogs, as it were, the Providence chef-co-owner emailed back this morning: “We haven't yet. Any suggestions?” Right. So if you're reading this and you happen to be the sort of person who takes vacations with your PacoJet and would consider it perfectly reasonable, as Vasquez has, to make cannelés de Bordeaux (beeswax; theoretically flammable) simply to whir them into an ice cream, you might want to stop by the restaurant.

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