When it comes to desserts, there’s a time and a place for elegance: your cheese platters, your poached pears. But a rendezvous in a romantic restaurant isn’t it. What’s the fun in trading bites of things that won’t drip down chins or need to be licked clean? Love and goo go hand in hand. The following confections should keep those fingers good and sticky.
Prezza’s banana-cream pie with coconut-milk jam ($9): all thick swirls and whipped peaks, this little pie is at once coy and sly, the offspring of angel’s and devil’s food. Soft and creamy, it manages to milk pure sweetness for all it’s worth; at the same time, the sauce, pearly-hued and toasty-tinged, has excitingly impure overtones.
Salts’ hot-chocolate soup with cinnamon croutons ($6.50): it’s every bit as charming as it sounds, and it begs to be spoon-fed. Essentially a ganache, this blend of semisweet chocolate and cream is sprinkled with pound-cake cubes and topped with freshly whipped cream and mint sprigs. If velvet and silk were edible, they’d taste something like this.
Fifty Seven’s molten chocolate cake ($8): molten is just a highbrow synonym for gooey, and this trendiest of concoctions is just a glorification of underbaking. Not that deliquescent chocolate isn’t well worth celebrating. At Fifty Seven, said celebration takes the form of a sweet volcano: a mound of dense, moist cake erupts in a warm chocolate flow, cooled off by a scoop of vanilla ice cream. If your companion doesn’t find this dessert suggestive of things to come, you may as well call it a night.
Taranta’s semifreddo torroncino con caffè espresso ($8): semifreddo is Italian for " partly frozen " ; may Taranta’s version be a symbol for all your romantic inhibitions as they melt away with every shared bite. The shot of espresso is not served alongside, but poured over the icy timbale of nougat and praline, so the almond and coffee flavors can mingle and meld. If your own mingling and melding goes half as smoothly, you’re going to be a very happy twosome.
Finale’s chocolate plate for two ($30): every Valentine’s Day, lovers-in-the-know descend upon Boston’s most cherished desserterie, Finale, for a bit of chocolate foreplay — make that a lot of chocolate foreplay. This year’s sampler includes two types of chocolate cake, one molten and the other filled with passion-fruit crème brûlée; a brownie sundae topped with white chocolate, Grand Marnier ice cream, and macadamia-nut toffee, all served in a chocolate cup; a chocolate-mint napoleon with candied kumquats; and still more. Can you imagine the afterplay?
Available at Prezza, 24 Fleet Street, Boston, (617) 227-1577; Salts, 798 Main Street, Cambridge, (617) 876-8444; Fifty Seven, 200 Stuart Street, Boston, (617) 423-5700; Taranta, 210 Hanover Street, Boston, (617) 720-0052; and Finale, 1 Columbus Avenue, Boston, (617) 423-3184.
