When To Avoid Ordering Desserts At Restaurants
When you dine out at as high of a cadence as we do, both personally and professionally, you learn a thing or two about a dinner, too.
A lot of the time, if a restaurant's desserts are bought from outside its walls rather than made in-house, it's a little more likely that they're some combination of previously frozen, past their prime, and cheap at your expense. Nobody wants to pay a triple markup for a square of Pepperidge Farm cake barely disguised beneath a sprig of mint. You want something that's freshly baked like a torte, whipped like a mousse, or at least dipped like a classic, romantic, chocolate-covered strawberry, for sweetness' sake. That way you'll know that you're spending your time and your money on something special that you can't get everywhere else. There are, however, some exceptions to this rule.
Rules, like crème brûlée, are made to be broken
Some great restaurants bring in desserts with more intentionality than others. They might not have the space, equipment, or staff to produce their own goodies, so they source excellent sweets from elsewhere. They might even ferry them from their very own related operations. Minetta Tavern in New York City, for example, brings its coconut cake over from its own Balthazar Bakery each day. Balthazar also distributes to unrelated restaurants citywide — a perk these spots often promote up front, beloved as the bakery is.
Other times, restaurants might serve some mass-produced confectionery as a lark. Maybe they're putting googly eyes on a Twinkie, suspending some spendy ingredient in Jell-O, or making bold moves with Pop Rocks. As long as everybody's transparent about the items' provenance, there's no harm in a little culinary nostalgia. But you can probably still get it for cheaper on the way home.