13 St. Marks Place (between 2nd and 3rd Ave, East Village)
Fatty Kat Eats: Chocolate Green Tea Lava Cake, Smoked Coconut Cheesecake, Golden Toast
I've diagnosed New York CIty with a big problem--dessert bar deficiency. There aren't enough places to satiate my sweet tooth, so I end up at the same places over and over again (#fattyproblems). Thankfully, one of those places is Spot Dessert Bar.
Spot has great hot and cold drinks, sweet snacks, and most importantly, "dessert tapas." Most of these tapas are well-portioned, inventive and downright delicious. Although, the dessert bar went through a rocky start with a few mishaps along the way (i.e. Ovaltine Cake Roll), I still love me some Spot, and I have a million punch cards to prove it.
Since day 1, my go-to has been the Chocolate Green Tea Lava Cake. Gringos, get over your fear of Asian desserts now and give this a try! Personally, I have no idea how one could deny the marriage of green tea with anything. Yes, I know, I'm sooooooo Asian. But this molten chocolate cake is ridiculously good. I've had this thing 23,834,910 times, and it always comes out perfectly warm. There's none of that half-assed semi-molten BS. It's 100% magical green liquid on the inside.
I had never tried the Golden Toast until recently, and I realized I wasted so many years without this in my life. It just didn't make sense to pay $6+ for a piece of bread, but now I completely understand. Thick toast soaked in condensed milk and delicately brushed with honey and butter = "Like OMG!" The crunchy outside and fluffy inside was a wonder to me. You don't really need the whipped cream, ice cream and strawberries, but they're there to spruce things up with each bite.
So here are a couple of the mishaps I referenced above. The Thai Tea Creme Brulee was special on its own, but the side of Thai ice tea messed everything up. It was so unnecessary and detracted from the dessert, if anything. Now, the most unfortunate dessert of all time goes to the Ovaltine Cake Roll. This thing tasted like a few slices of Chinatown bakery cake with Ovaltine ice cream (albeit ridiculously good on its own) with an overpowering chocolate sauce and an unidentified brown crumble. At the time, this was one of the specials. It didn't make it onto the recently revamped permanent menu, so I'm glad they took our constructive advice to heart.
One of the best specials I've ever tried was the Meringue with Fresh Berries. I'm not a huge fan of meringue, but this one resembled freshly whipped cream...so me like. The only way I could tell this was meringue was a hint of starchiness that would never be found in whipped cream. The fresh berries were very much in season, while the raspberry sorbet gave this treat an eye-twitching kick. Nomz!
It's really hard for me to declare one of these gorgeous desserts as my favorite, but the Smoked Coconut Cheesecake would have to be it. I don't know what kind of hard core drugs they put in this little slice of heaven, but I want more! The cheesecake is creamy with a subtle "smoky" heat that is truly wonderful. A key part of this equation is the coconut ice cream with basil seeds. Who thinks up this stuff? Top it off with some fruits and you got yourself a winner.
I LOVE SPOT. Their Asian-inspired desserts aren't too sweet, which is incredibly important to me. Too much sugar can mask certain ingredients, and I don't want to miss out on any funky flavors. Spot is always packed with Asians with 2 things: a sweet tooth and a fat dental bill. On a busy night (aka every night), you might wait 10-30 minutes, but I promise you, it's worth your time and moolah. If you hate it, send me the bill.
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