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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 5, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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There's something I wanted to talk about for a while. Desserts.

No, not the arid terrains with sand dunes and camels. The sweet things people sometimes eat at the end of the meal. Those ones.

So, when I came to live in the US (a while ago), I found the dessert game in the most restaurants - even upscale ones (not the Michelin level - I am not rich enough to go to those) - is pitifully bad. In general, in the States, you can have a good meal in many places, serving wide variety of cuisines. I have had hundreds of excellent meals. Finding an excellent dessert was much harder.

Most places have chocolate cake, maybe a cheesecake, maybe ice cream. Crème brûlée if they are fancy (over half of them won't make it right though). Maybe couple more options, but that's it. Nothing to write home about.

Cafés are even worse. Unless it's one of those rare specialized shops, you get muffins, croissants, maybe lemon loafs, and those enormous cookies whose point I still can't get. If they feel fancy, maybe some French macarons. But usually that's it. For any real variety - and the world of pastry and patisserie is no less varied than the world of main dishes - you need to go to a specialized shop. Which are quite rare. I have probably a dozen of cake shops around - but I don't need a whole frickin wedding cake! I just want something small and nice to have with my coffee. But within at least 20 minute drive of my place, I see maybe one place with decent variety (which is also closed half of the week - probably because lack of patrons?). Despite over half a million people living around. Back when I lived in Silicon Valley (~3 mln people?), I knew some decent places, but also not too many, especially outside of SF.

So why is this happening? Do Americans hate desserts? Do they just not care? Or am I just not looking at the right places and it is my ignorance that is causing me to suffer (as usual)?

I remember when I first visited the US (even longer while ago, over 20 years now) it was nearly the same situation with beer. It's not that you couldn't get a decent beer at all. It's that you can't expect a random or even upscale place to have even a half decent beer game, and you needed to go to special places for weird people to get a good beer. Now the situation has been, thankfully, greatly changed. Even in a random pub you can have one-two decent beers on draft, more in cans/bottles, any self-respecting restaurant would have some local crafts and some nationally popular choices, a good pub would have dozens, and it's not unheard of to encounter a multi-page beer menu in a non-specialized place. And even the most mundane supermarkets would bother to present a respectable selection.

Could this happen to the sweets too? I understand the complexities (beer is much easier to pack and preserve than sweets), but maybe there's still hope?

No, not the arid terrains with sand dunes and camels.

That's deserts, not desserts.

Pedantry aside, I've certainly never found desserts at restaurants particularly lacking. Yeah if you go to Chilis or something you're going to get nothing special. But that's because as a restaurant it's nothing special. On the other hand if I go to a really nice restaurant, I get really nice desserts that knock my socks off.

One thing which may be contributing to what you have experienced is that cooking savory dishes and making desserts are two somewhat different skill sets. Someone who can make good main dishes hasn't necessarily practiced making good desserts.

Americans certainly don't hate desserts though, why the heck do you think we're so fat? It's not because we're eating too much savory food, I tell you that much.

One thing which may be contributing to what you have experienced is that cooking savory dishes and making desserts are two somewhat different skill sets.

Oh I know. But I'm not talking about Chili's. I'm talking about restaurants with $100+ steaks. It's not that I go to those every week, but I've been to some. Their dessert game is slightly better, but not by much. It's not that they can't afford a pastry chef that can bring it to the next level. It's that they don't think they need to.

why the heck do you think we're so fat?

Cheeseburgers and hippo sized cola? ;)

BTW, my secondary complaint - which is overshadowed by the primary one, of course - is that those American desserts that I manage to get are almost always over-sugared. No, dude, "sweet" doesn't mean you should put as much sugar in it as you can without it being just called "a blob of sugar". You can make sweet things that have balanced taste not overwhelmed by sugar. If fact, that's how it should be done - but rarely how it is done. I mean, again, it's not universal - I've had very good ones, but the overall tendency is "it's supposed to be sweet - dump another sack of sugar into it, people love sugar!"

Cheeseburgers and hippo sized cola? ;)

The latter, for sure. Drinking sugar is a great way to get fat.

I share your complaints. Most desserts are far too sweet for me, and when I make recipes at home, I usually halve the sugar called for to no ill effect.

Oh I know. But I'm not talking about Chili's. I'm talking about restaurants with $100+ steaks. It's not that I go to those every week, but I've been to some. Their dessert game is slightly better, but not by much. It's not that they can't afford a pastry chef that can bring it to the next level. It's that they don't think they need to.

Fair enough, so we're talking nice restaurants. But in that case I honestly don't know what to tell you. I've never had bad or even just OK desserts at a restaurant like that. They're always quite good in my experience.

Maybe it's because you're going to steakhouses?

Steakhouses both seem highly formulaic and the food is so heavy and the portions so large that people usually don't really want a dessert, so it becomes a bit of an afterthought.

Not only steakhouses, I just used steaks as an example because it's very comparable - one would know how much steaks costs in various kinds of restaurants. If I used some specialty dish it'd be harder to compare how fancy the restaurant is. But, tbh, I can do a dessert after a steak - I usually go for a smaller but tastier steak rather than a slab of meat that would put me in a coma for the rest of the day. That of course unless it's a Brazilian restaurant where all hope is lost and there I don't even dream of eating anything but meat (and a bit of veggies of course).