You were so good through Christmas, resisting waves of cookies—even that chocolate torte. And New Year’s flew by entirely without sweets. At midnight you even passed on champagne—"I’m watching my sugar," you said. You’ve earned that slender figure. But now comes the hard part: skipping desserts for the rest of the year. If you’ve resolved to cut back on sweets, we dare you to read this, our gooey gauntlet of sweet temptations.
Chocolate-banana pannenkoeken
So you’d like to try this cute new Lincoln Square breakfast place, Pannenkoeken Cafe. You get there, wait around for oneof the few tables, sit down and order, and then—wham!—the chocolate-banana pannenkoeken ($7.75) arrives. It’s the greatest dessert masquerading as breakfast ever. The lacy, buttery Dutch-style pancake gets topped with toasted hazelnuts, sweet chocolate syrup, whipped cream and imported cocoa powder. The sugar level is way up there, and space is a little tight in this bright little room, but—oh boy!—what the Dutch can do with the humble pancake.
The Chocolate Bar
You know, the Peninsula is a darn romantic place. Maybe you should swing by with your date for a drink or something. Specifically, we recommend The Lobby at the Peninsula, say between 8 p.m. and midnight, Thursday through Saturday. No reason, really ... except for the Chocolate Bar ($32 per person), featuring a panoply of international chocolates, including truffles, chocolate bark, tarts and fruits covered in the stuff. Oh—and you get one drink, but we think that just takes up much-needed space.
Hummingbird cake
The danger of eating in the honeyed dining room at Art Smith’s TABLE Fifty-Two is that indulgence seems so perfectly normal. Don’t all meals begin with free cheese biscuits and deviled eggs? And Smith’s tableside visits, Southern drawl in full swing, aren’t exactly devised to help you resist either. So when you finish the last bacon-filled morsel of your entree and the dessert menu arrives, don’t expect to put up much of a fight in the face of the Hummingbird Cake ($9). This layered beauty is one part chocolate, one part banana, one part coconut and one part basic human right to partake of such a civilized finish to a meal.
Sweet potato doughnuts
The protein-oriented entrees and modest starters at swank new Near West Loop spot Powerhouse no doubt comply with your diet—more or less. So what’s the big deal with a little last-course love? You’ll find the dessert list well considered, but irrelevant after you’ve spotted the sweet potato doughnuts ($9). Each little puff arrives glistening with a rich, sticky brown-butter glaze that adds a maddening savory-sweet component to its crispy, ridged exterior. A pool of cinnamon-flavored sabayon secures the little gems to the plate where they await your fork—or if no one’s watching, your fingers. Why not get two orders? The half-dozen per plate aren’t nearly enough to consider sharing with a date.
Peach cobbler or Hershey’s Chocolate cobbler
Cutesy breakfast-lunch spot Violet does a clip on weekends, offering griddled faves and interesting savories. Yeah, whatever. They also have cobblers, and not those weak, mostly fruit versions found at fancy places. The peach cobbler ($5) is a double-crusted, honking wedge, more pie than strictly cobbler. Order it up and find warm, buttery peaches next to flaky crust. And—brace yourself—there’s also a Hershey’s Chocolate cobbler ($5). Imagine a gooey, fudge-like filling topped by buttery cookie crumbles and you have only an approximate idea of how rich this thing is, never mind the dollop of dense, homemade whipped cream.
[ Fred Schlatter is a Metromix special contributor. ] metromix@tribune.com
