Grapefruit Brulée
ChikaLicious, $12 for 3 courses
Just like eating breakfast for dinner or walking a cat on a leash, a dessert-only restaurant is a delightful perversion of the natural order. At the ChikaLicious Dessert Bar, there's no need to save room for dessert, because dessert is all you're getting.
A $12 prix fixe "meal" includes an amuse-bouche, main course, and a plate of assorted petit-fours. Another $7 buys either a wine pairing or an additional main; tea and coffee are also available. The menu changes daily and seasonal ingredients feature heavily. Tables are an option but bellying up to the bar gets you a stage show in the bargain, as the pastry chefs behind the counter dodge and twirl around each other in a kind of plating ballet (above). Come on the right day and chef-owner Chika Tillman will be there to chat about her creations.
ChikaLicious doesn't accept reservations and the website lists substantial "typical waits" for particular days and times. They also won't seat groups larger that four, a pragmatic move for a place that can only accomodate 20 patrons at once, and one that helps to encourage an atmosphere that's convivial rather than deafening.
According to its website, the ChikaLicious concept boils down to "American desserts, French Presentation and Japanese tasting portions". For most of us Big Gulp-suckled Americans it will be the portion sizes that illicit the strongest initial reaction. On my visit, the amuse du jour was a scoop of vanilla ice cream about the size of a quail egg, buoyed on a few spoonfuls of dark, aromatic, espresso gelee (above left); absolutely delcious, quickly dispatched. My friend Gary and I amused ourselves further by considering what items might best be used to add a sense of scale to my photos: a quarter? his pinkie finger? a family of seamonkies?
For mains, Gary had macerated kiwis with yogurt gelato, lavender syrup, and a jaunty "coconut sombrero" (below left), while the woman on my other side chose the iced Fromage Blanc "cheese cake" (above right); both issued favorable reviews.
I had the grapefruit brulee, two wedges of caramelized fruit gussied up with candied pistachios, a light sabayon, and another quail egg of slightly bitter, boozy sorbet. It was a lovely play of flavors and textures--smooth cream and spiky citrus, crakly dry nuts and juice-swollen fruit. My only criticism is predictible but, I think, springs from a generous impluse: if it had only been one bite bigger, Gary might have been able to have his taste without me growling at him.
The minute petit-fours were, sadly, anti-climactic: a dark chocolate truffle as appealling as a dusty raisin, a tiny Ritz-ish cracker topped with cream and candied citron, and, best of all, a lovely fresh marshmallow sided with toasted coconut.
Just across the street the ChikaLicious Dessert Club offers stylish reinterpretations of classic baked goods and treats in a more casual setting.
Southampton Tea Truffle
Bespoke Chocolates, $2.25
Extra Place doesn't exactly welcome visitors, particularly in the gathering dusk of a late winter evening. It's a stunted alleyway just off the Bowery, too small to appear on most maps, wallpapered with graffiti, and, on the occasion of my visit, bedecked with police tape. That it's not the kind of place where you'd expect to find an artisanal chocolate shop makes stepping out of the alley and into Bespoke Chocolates that much more delightful.
Open less than a year, Bespoke has made its name with impeccably crafted small-batch chocolates featuring creative flavor profiles. At the helm is London-trained chocolatier Rachel Zoe Insler, whose previous career was in "academic cognitive neuroscience research".
While I don't want to belabor that transition or cast Insler as a cocoa-streaked mad scientist, it's hard not to look at the shop and see echoes of a laboratory or an old-fashioned apothecary as apron-clad chocolatiers bustle around in plain sight behind the gleaming marble counter of an open kitchen. As they patiently answer questions about their creations, it also becomes apparent that their process is suspiciously scientific.
I asked about the genesis of my chosen truffle, the Southampton Tea (top photo), and heard a tale of drawn-out research and methodical experimentation; infusing the silky-smooth ganache with a maximum wallop of apricot-scented Ceylon tea was not as straightforward as you might think. While the shell of fruity Caribbean chocolate comes from readymade couverture, it was given perhaps the most perfect temper I've ever experienced; snapping my front teeth through the shell seemed to set off tiny shockwaves, and a millisecond later the glossy chocolate cracked into two halves held loosely together by oozing ganache.
Bespoke is also famous for an award-winning confection filled with liquid, sea-salted caramel and rolled in crumbled pretzels (below right, front), and a hand-beaten spread of chocolate, hazelnuts, and Marcona almonds (in process, below left).
Bespoke Chocolates
6 Extra Place
New York NY, 10003
212/260-7103
Les Tres Leches Doughnut
The Doughnut Plant, $2.25
While the Doughnut Plant's website is full of streamlined graphics and elegant animation, by far the most moving feature is a slideshow of owner Mark Isreal's family photos, ending with a heartfelt thanks to his supportive loved ones. Several black-and-white snapshots feature his grandfather, a commercial baker who died with Isreal was only a toddler but left behind a valuable legacy scrawled on a yellowing index card: the recipe for an egg-free yeast doughnut.
Those light, fluffy, and vegetarian-friendly doughnuts were the foundation of the grandson's fortunes. For five years, working in a converted tenement basement, Isreal baked through the night, then delivered doughnuts to high-end retail outlets by bike each morning. In his spare time, Isreal perfected an original recipe for a stellar cake doughnut, now available in flavors such as Blackout (chocolate encrusted chocolate cake bursting with chocolate pudding) and the Cinco de Mayo-inspired Les Tres Leches (pictured above). The Factory's square jelly doughnuts are also a departure from the norm; instead of a single jelly core waiting to drop in your lap like hot lava, there's a generous seam of house-made fruit preserves circling the dough like an enclosed racetrack.
Doughnut Plant products contain no transfats, no preservatives, and no artificial flavors. They are made with carefully chosen ingredients--Valhrona chocolate, Tahitian vanilla, fresh coconut, seasonal fruit, and nuts that are roasted and ground on the premises. Ingredients like lavender buds, Meyer lemons, or rose petals that could end up as just so much frippery are used deliberately and to full, flavorful effect. Overseas shops (in Tokyo and Korea) have a slightly different menu, featuring local produce and flavors (shiso and yuzu!).
After waiting in a long but snappy line at the Plant's Lower East Side store, I ordered a cup of hot, strong chai and a Tres Leches and perched on the windowseat to eat. The seat was delightful--crayon-colored tiles stamped out with a doughnut cutter and raku-fired by Isreal's father, Marvin. The doughnut was even better--plump and light, with a milky glaze and a mildly sweet, sensuously creamy filling. The "three milks" were in harmonious balance, no one flavor or texture overpowering the others. As I ate I found myself thinking of St. Exupery's definition of perfection--"...not when nothing more can be added, but when nothing more can be taken away.”
