Angel food cake is given extra heat with cayenne-spiced strawberries at Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink in Miami.

Meanwhile, at A Voce in New York City, Executive Pastry Chef Joshua Gripper combines the tart flavor of rhubarb that is seasoned with bay leaf, black pepper and juniper with orange- and bourbon-spiked crespelle, white-chocolate-and-mint cream, orange gelato, orange segments, salted caramel, pine nuts and mint.

In different—though equally successful—ways, The Montville Inn and A Voce draw the savory side of the dinner menu into the dessert menu. Their offerings also complement the restaurants’ points of view: The Montville Inn provides an upscale yet approachable American menu suitable for a strawberry-rhubarb aperitif and a cobbler finale, whereas A Voce’s sophisticated interpretation of Italian dishes makes light crespelle a fitting meal conclusion.

Such context matters. The most successful fruit desserts are not only seasonal, but also they provide a fitting segue between a meal’s savory start and its often-sweet ending. “It doesn’t make sense if you’re eating at an Italian restaurant and you order dessert and it’s strawberry shortcake,” Gripper reasons.

When developing desserts to follow a restaurant’s savory menu, guest expectations need to be considered.

Lincoln Carson, corporate pastry chef for San Francisco-based Mina Group, oversees menu development for the company’s growing list of restaurant concepts, including Michael Mina in San Francisco and Bourbon Steak in Miami, Detroit, and Scottsdale, Ariz.

Chocolate-filled pears in phyllo are served at The Cellar in Fullerton, Calif.

At Bourbon Steak’s Miami location, passion-fruit panna cotta is paired with coconut and mango sorbets in a light dessert that is at once accessible and adventurous. A final flourish of sliced avocado adds subtle richness. “It’s something that you can eat and really enjoy and that you can appreciate on a higher level,” Carson says.

Jonathan St. Hilaire, corporate pastry chef for Atlanta-based multiconcept operator Concentrics Restaurants, also tailors his desserts to match the style of each of the group’s restaurants.

At Trois, a fine-dining restaurant that focuses on tasting menus, St. Hilaire uses vacuum-packed apricots flavored with lemon verbena and vanilla bean as a dessert component. Simple, fresh blueberry shortcake, in contrast, works well at Two Urban Licks, a bustling restaurant in which a wood-burning oven dominates the dining room. And at steakhouse concept Twelve, pineapple upside-down cake gets upscale flourishes of pineapple granité and brown-sugar ice cream.

Yet St. Hilaire also pays attention to local taste preferences, noting that some produce items, notably rhubarb, do not sell well in Atlanta. When he does use rhubarb, he masks its texture by juicing it, straining it and making a gelée.

At Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink in Miami, Executive Pastry Chef Hedy Goldsmith also keeps customer tastes in mind.

“People, whether they live here or vacation here, are not interested in heavier seasonal fruit [such as pears and apples],” she says. Goldsmith relies instead on tropical fruits and local citrus varieties, serving desserts such as Key lime cheesecake flan with local Key limes and highlighting local produce at its peak.

Suzanne Imaz, pastry chef of Chicago-based Cornerstone Restaurant Group, will showcase local cherries in a vibrant soup at one sixtyblue, also in Chicago, this summer.

Strawberry-rhubarb cobbler at The Montville Inn.

Once strained, the poaching liquid is thickened with cornstarch and then chilled to form the base of the soup. To serve, the poached cherries are combined with a few pitted cherry halves and lemon verbena ice cream, with the chilled soup poured tableside.

Yet Imaz doesn’t downplay the importance of fruit dessert classics. “[These desserts] are very seasonal; they have contrast in flavor with the sweet and the sour, and they have contrast in textures, where you’re getting the soft fruit and the crispy toppings,” she says.

Memories of summertime fruit desserts inspired John Livera, executive chef of The Montville Inn, to serve warm strawberry-rhubarb cobblers and experiment with fried pies. For the fried pies, which he shapes like empanadas, he takes the same strawberry and rhubarb filling and encloses it in a butter-based short dough. Overnight maceration of the fruit ensures that plenty of juice is available for the restaurant’s popular martinis.

Simple fruit desserts also perform well for Golden, Colo.-based Boston Market. The chain is reintroducing a limited-time-offer tart cherry cobbler baked with an oat-and-brown-sugar topping. The cobbler, on the menu through June, comes in individual servings or in large aluminum containers for family-style sharing.

In Miami, Goldsmith is experimenting with a shareable peach crostata to be complemented with sides of crème fraîche and blackberry jam. More important for Goldsmith, though, is not cluttering dessert with too many components.

“We don’t have to put 50 things on a plate anymore,” Goldsmith says. “We haven’t stripped away everything that is fabulous. We put all the passion into what is on the plate.”