After success in a certain bike race, the DessertBuzz editorial team decided to head to one of their absolute favorite restaurants for dessert: Dovetail, on the upper west side. One of the best things about Dovetail is that they constantly change their dessert menu. Dovetail’s pastry chef, Vera Tong, seems to like to mix classic options with a few experimental desserts. I still regret not trying the grape soup that I saw last winter, but I did eat the peanut butter pretzel with sea salt and beer ice cream. Edgy, but not as hectic as Wd-50. . .
On Sunday’s Mother’s Day menu there were a couple intriguing choices but I had it narrowed down to either the pain perdu or the chocolate hazelnut fondant. Normally, I always go with the chocolate option – that’s DessertBuzz Law #1: when in doubt, go with the dessert that contains dark chocolate. However, in this case, I knew I still had 5 artisanal dark chocolate bars waiting at home that were going to be eaten this week so I went with the pain perdu. Truth be told, I had to ask what pain perdu was. But now, after reading all about it on the internets, I am of course an expert. Pain perdu means “lost bread” and it was a way for people to reclaim stale bread by soaking it in eggs and milk and then frying it. Which takes us to DessertBuzz law #2: when you can’t apply rule #1 go with the fried dessert option. Of course DessertBuzz law #3 is: If you ever see a dessert that is both fried and contains dark chocolate you must order 2 servings and take one home to photograph it for a feature on Dessertbuzz.
Anywho- the pain perdu was like a light, evenly fried, French toast saturated with a flavorful egg and milk mixture. It looks like it was finished off with a blow torch too (but that is just speculation on my part). The pool of caramel below the bread was even tastier than if it was made with real maple syrup. The berries were 5-star as was the vanilla bean ice cream. The picture really says it all. The also gave us 2 mini-red velvet cupcakes and 2 small tea cakes to take home. Damn I love this place. I plan to talk some teammates into going back this week for more.