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October 3rd, 2009

I rarely order dessert when I eat out. Partly because I just don’t have that strong of a sweet tooth (maybe being elbow deep into sugar, chocolate, and cream all day more than satisfies my dessert cravings). But the other reason, is that outside of 4-star restaurants or spots that push the boundaries of cooking, I’m convinced the dessert menu won’t have anything that I haven’t seen before, and I just don’t crave sugar enough to try another ubiquitous molten chocolate cake, mediocre apple cake or too-sweet tart. The exception to this rule is ethnic restaurants, and the more foreign to me, the better, where the element of surprise alone is enough to get me excited about that final course, along with everything that precedes it.

So, the other day, when  a chef-friend and I decided to go to dinner after listening to legends Daniel Boulud, Pierre Gagnaire, and Grant Achetz talk about the restaurant industry at the Star Chefs Congress, we opted for a kind of food that neither of us gets to eat that often: Persian, and settled on the blandly decorated Ravagh Persian Grill. One look at the menu and we knew we wouldn’t be disappointed–not only was the large folder of options jam-packed, it was jam packed with all kinds of things I’d never heard of, a sure precursor to an invigorating meal. The sambuseh, fried dumplings, were crisp and hot with a rich, earthy filling of mashed chickpea, but it was the spicy/sour herbed chutney that came with them that I couldn’t get enough of. Ditto for the torshi, a small side dish of mixed, chopped pickles that I could have easily eaten all on its own. Neither my food-genius friend nor I could figure out the delicious, predominant spice that made it so distinctive. Add in the lamb kebobs, kashk badamjoon, and barberry and saffron rice that we ordered and we could barely fathom dessert.  We’ll at least look at the menu, we told our waiter. Surely there’d be something on it I’d never tried.

Which only made our disappointment that much greater. Our waiter handed us a small, postcard-sized, full-color, glossy booklet filled with industrially produced fancy “French” desserts: chocolate mousse encased with a striped sponge cake, hollowed out citrus halves filled with sorbet, all things that were manufactured in a factory somewhere, with lots of stabilizers and little love, which were then packaged up and sent who knows how far. This was it?

You don’t have any Persian desserts? we asked incredulously, trying not-so-hard to disguise our disappointment. It just didn’t make sense.

Well…, our waiter offered. We do have a few Persian desserts but we don’t put them on the menu because usually it’s only Persian people who want them.

Turns out they had three desserts and we decided on the one that sounded the “weirdest”: faloodeh, which our waiter described as rose water ice cream with rice noodles, fresh limes, and cherries.  How do you not order that? The ice cream was actually closer to finely shaved ice flavored with so much rose water that eaten alone, it was like a mouth full of frozen perfume. But we’d neglected its condiments: fresh lime wedges and soupy sour cherries. Once we tempered the rose water ice with the sour fresh juices from both the limes and the cherries it was another experience entirely: refreshing, complex, acidic, addictive. And as promised, thin, opaque rice noodles had been folded into the rose water ice, giving the dessert a pleasant, slightly chewy bite. But then, I’m a sucker for the texture of all rice products.  We finished it, and must have been so visibly happy to have “discovered” this gastronomic find, that our waiter then told us about another item that wasn’t on the menu either but that had us both drooling. And before we knew it, he set down yet another bowl of food in front of us, a gift. This time we were back to savory: a sheet of rice (the rice that gets stuck to the bottom of the pot during cooking, turning it sticky, crisp, and chewy all at the same time) smothered with a tangy lamb stew. It ended up being our favorite dish of the night (after the faloodeh). Turns out that sometimes it does pay to ask about dessert.

1 comment

  1. You remind me of a restaurant that used to be on the lower west side, 10th ave around 14th street, called The West Boondocks, small hole in the wall Jazz club with great soul food when in was vogue. On any weekend you might find Nina Simone or some other such celebrity, and I can tell you I was usually the only white. I left NY for about 5 years, came back and went there for dinner. The food went from authentically original to boringingly mediochre. When asked what happeened the waiter said the NY Times gave them a great review, clientel changed, and they started cooking for the new clientel. It was never the same.

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Going Off Menu and Discovering a New Dessert

I rarely order dessert when I eat out. Partly because I just don’t have that strong of a sweet tooth (maybe being elbow deep into sugar, chocolate, and cream all day more than satisfies my dessert cravings). But the other reason, is that outside of 4-star restaurants or spots that push the boundaries of cooking, I’m convinced the dessert menu won’t have anything that I haven’t seen before, and I just don’t crave sugar enough to try another ubiquitous molten chocolate cake, mediocre apple cake or too-sweet tart. The exception to this rule is ethnic restaurants, and the more foreign to me, the better, where the element of surprise alone is enough to get me excited about that final course, along with everything that precedes it.

So, the other day, when  a chef-friend and I decided to go to dinner after listening to legends Daniel Boulud, Pierre Gagnaire, and Grant Achetz talk about the restaurant industry at the Star Chefs Congress, we opted for a kind of food that neither of us gets to eat that often: Persian, and settled on the blandly decorated Ravagh Persian Grill. One look at the menu and we knew we wouldn’t be disappointed–not only was the large folder of options jam-packed, it was jam packed with all kinds of things I’d never heard of, a sure precursor to an invigorating meal. The sambuseh, fried dumplings, were crisp and hot with a rich, earthy filling of mashed chickpea, but it was the spicy/sour herbed chutney that came with them that I couldn’t get enough of. Ditto for the torshi, a small side dish of mixed, chopped pickles that I could have easily eaten all on its own. Neither my food-genius friend nor I could figure out the delicious, predominant spice that made it so distinctive. Add in the lamb kebobs, kashk badamjoon, and barberry and saffron rice that we ordered and we could barely fathom dessert.  We’ll at least look at the menu, we told our waiter. Surely there’d be something on it I’d never tried.

Which only made our disappointment that much greater. Our waiter handed us a small, postcard-sized, full-color, glossy booklet filled with industrially produced fancy “French” desserts: chocolate mousse encased with a striped sponge cake, hollowed out citrus halves filled with sorbet, all things that were manufactured in a factory somewhere, with lots of stabilizers and little love, which were then packaged up and sent who knows how far. This was it?

You don’t have any Persian desserts? we asked incredulously, trying not-so-hard to disguise our disappointment. It just didn’t make sense.

Well…, our waiter offered. We do have a few Persian desserts but we don’t put them on the menu because usually it’s only Persian people who want them.

Turns out they had three desserts and we decided on the one that sounded the “weirdest”: faloodeh, which our waiter described as rose water ice cream with rice noodles, fresh limes, and cherries.  How do you not order that? The ice cream was actually closer to finely shaved ice flavored with so much rose water that eaten alone, it was like a mouth full of frozen perfume. But we’d neglected its condiments: fresh lime wedges and soupy sour cherries. Once we tempered the rose water ice with the sour fresh juices from both the limes and the cherries it was another experience entirely: refreshing, complex, acidic, addictive. And as promised, thin, opaque rice noodles had been folded into the rose water ice, giving the dessert a pleasant, slightly chewy bite. But then, I’m a sucker for the texture of all rice products.  We finished it, and must have been so visibly happy to have “discovered” this gastronomic find, that our waiter then told us about another item that wasn’t on the menu either but that had us both drooling. And before we knew it, he set down yet another bowl of food in front of us, a gift. This time we were back to savory: a sheet of rice (the rice that gets stuck to the bottom of the pot during cooking, turning it sticky, crisp, and chewy all at the same time) smothered with a tangy lamb stew. It ended up being our favorite dish of the night (after the faloodeh). Turns out that sometimes it does pay to ask about dessert.