Dessert Bars: Alan's Take

12.14.06

Let's be clear: There is nothing wrong with dessert. There is something wrong with dessert bars. Restaurants have, over the years, proved themselves plenty capable of handling the yearnings of dessert-hungry diners. To sit and linger after a good meal, with a cup of coffee and a beautiful dessert, is one of life's small pleasures. To cram into a tiny bar, after traveling over to the dessert bar and inevitably standing around waiting for a space to open up, is not. In fact, if the desserts were superior, perhaps it might be. Unfortunately, they never are. At all the dessert bars I've visited, the quality of the actual desserts is neither better nor more impressive than at most moderately priced restaurants. Rarely do the desserts warrant the journey to the bar, or the premium pricing.

Manhattan's Room 4 Dessert sounded as if it might be the exception to that unfortunate rule. I had heard stories of dessert sushi, apple "tartare," and tasting menus based entirely on the concept of a single color. The reality was a menu that consisted of eight desserts: four parfait-style bits of frippery and four "tasting plates," which were essentially deconstructed regular desserts. In fact, outside of an applewood gelee, nothing was outstanding, particularly good, or even particularly interesting. The desserts really seemed to be afterthoughts, detractors from the actual main attraction: the booze. Compare the eight desserts and single cheese plate on the menu with the 14 wines by the glass, 21 bottles of wine, and the six specialty cocktails on offer. And all of the wines, spirits, and cocktails we sampled were superlative. Why can't this kind of quality control be applied to the restaurant's namesake? Why could the "mar-tea-ni" be so good—a hint of white tea adding a surprising note to what is usually the most unsurprising of cocktails—when a heaping portion of shiso cream had the taste and texture of a rejected Cool Whip flavor? Desserts such as the "tiramisu" at New York's Falai—hot espresso poured over a bowl of cocoa soil with a quenelle of perfect, light whipped cream, topped off with edible flowers—prove that these types of deconstructed desserts can be terrific (and cheaper), so why bother going to a dessert bar for a subpar dessert? If what you really want is a drink, maybe you should. If you want dessert, you shouldn't.

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