Don’t worry. I’m not losing my balls and sprouting a vagina because I’m talking about dessert here. It’s just that I’ve come across a pack of five amazing sweet dishes during my meat escapades that I felt the need to share them with you all. These are the five best NYC steakhouse desserts I’ve ever tried, in no particular order.
Del Frisco’s Double Eagle
Yes, yes. Everyone knows how amazing the “off menu” lemon cake is here (on the right below). But the on menu butter cake is fucking obscene (on the left below).
I guarantee you’ve never tasted anything quite like it. Just trust me and order it. So good I forgot to take a pic of it by itself before I started destroying it.
It’s like a glorious cross between regular cake, buttery crumb cake and satisfying pound cake. The edges are crisp and the inside is soft.
Ruth’s Chris
Okay this is an odd fucker, but so good. Ruth’s Chris serves a sweet potato casserole dish as a side item for your meal. I generally hate sweet potatoes. Even the wanna be, knock off French fry version of sweet potatoes. But the trick here is to get it as dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
Once you do that, you transform them into a sweet treat, much like candied yams (only better).
Delmonico’s Restaurant
The baked Alaska is really something to behold here.
They invented the fucking thing for fuck’s sake, so I guess it better be good. It involves walnut sponge cake, apricot compote, banana gelato and toasted Italian meringue. Eat it. This is a part of American history, and it’s delicious to boot.
The Capital Grille
This dessert is really what set me off and inspired me to write this list, because I was blown away by it. Coconut cream pie.
Whatever short cake or sugar cookie crust they’ve got on the bottom is like fucking crack. And the cream is so nice without being overpowering or too sweet. Awesome.
Ocean Prime
Carrot cake might be my favorite cake ever.
This is 10 layers of the shit, with the classic cream cheese frosting in between and on top, and garnished with a kick-you-in-the-ass pineapple sauce that you wouldn’t think makes any sense, but it works so well.
An honorable mention here would be Peter Luger’s strudel with copious amounts of schlag. I haven’t tried the strudel, but I can vouch for the schlag (bowl in background below).
So why does it get an honorable mention if I haven’t even tried it? I’ve heard great things about it from trusted sources, and, well, because I really do love the schlag. I could eat it by itself, spoonful after spoonful.
I guess we do owe Luger’s a bit of gratitude anyway. If it weren’t for Luger’s, the “American Steakhouse” concept might not exist here. Yes, Delmonico’s was the first restaurant in the country and it’s a WAY better steak joint now, but the Luger’s proprietors brought the idea of a “meat hall” over from their family traditions of Austria (Vienna), and that just wasn’t really here before then. So, thanks Pete. Nice work. Keep at it. You might eventually get the steaks right someday. Hayooooo!