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By Jay Lyon
©2007 Maiden Name Press LLC
As main menus at Latin restaurants have evolved over the past 20 years, so have the opportunities for restaurants to make a splash with their desserts.
"Latin food traditionally was heavy, which doesn't leave a lot of room for dessert. But that's changing today," says Kirk Bachmann, executive chef and vice president of education for Le Cordon Bleu Schools North America.
More restaurants are learning how a good dessert menu can help a restaurant distinguish itself as a destination, says Bachmann. "Mexican restaurants are typically known for their primary cuisine, so a restaurant that has a special dessert can set itself apart from most," he explains.
When it comes to considering dessert menus, Bachmann says restaurants should analyze certain variables. "For one thing, location is a real key. Is the restaurant in a tourist destination or a business district?
"If a restaurant is in a business district, it's not as essential to have a dessert menu, because people don't typically stay around after a meal — they are more interested in getting in and out," he says.
Authenticity is another key, according to today's chefs. Latin and Mexican desserts have evolved from the traditional flan and the Tex-Mex notion of fried ice cream to today's sophisticated end-of-meal offerings.
"Many Latin restaurants now focus on regional colors in their food, and that's something that they can carry through with their desserts," says Jeff Smedstad, executive chef at Atlanta's Sala Sabor de México.
At Sala Sabor, for example, the Pastel de Elote is a sweet corn cake topped with fresh whipped cream and cajeta de cabra (a goats milk caramel traditionally used in crepes). "Pastel de Elote is something you can eat all over Veracruz," he adds. "You can be inventive with your food, yet at the same time traditional."
 Sula Sabor's Torta de Chocolaté |
That kind of creativity is the key to successful drink menus, owners and bartenders at Mexican restaurants nationwide say. Patrons are flocking to unique and flavorful bar offerings and are willing to pay a premium for creative specialty cocktails.
Even classics like the Flan Classico have a new twist at Sala Sabor. Smedstad serves the traditional vanilla-caramel egg custard with an Almendrado floater: a shot of almond tequila served over the caramel.
"That's something we've also done with damaina, an anise-flavored herb from the Baja that's named after the Mayan god of fertility," he says. "We've created a damaina-infused flan, which is something that we've served around Valentine's Day."
Tropical indigenous fruits are also great for giving chefs creative ways to invent unique desserts that are their own, but still true to a region.
The innovative dessert menu at Chicago's Cuatro restaurant started with the restaurant's original pastry chef, who was born and raised in Mexico City, co-owner Sara Navarro Elias explains. "We wanted to fuse the different styles of Latin cooking," she says.
The result? A pastry menu that includes some of the more interesting desserts to be found anywhere.
Included are a Flan Montado (a hazelnut flan and dark chocolate cake duet, served with plantain caramel sauce and coffee syrup) and Espuma de Mango (an intense mango mousse served along with a strawberry ceviche in a half Brazilian red papaya).
"We try not to go so heavy on the Mexican side of Latin cuisine, but the Mexican influence is still the biggest on our menu," Elias says.
The top-seller at Cuatro is the Pastel de Chocolaté, which is a Oaxacan chocolate mousse cake with cocoa nib-tequila crème served with sweet corn ice cream. "Everyone is intrigued by that dessert, because the cocoa nib in the middle gives you a crunch, while a tequila-drenched cherry inside the tequila crème is a surprise as well," Elias explains.
One ingredient that gives chefs dessert flexibility is chocolate. "When you're working with chocolate, there are lots of ways to go. The inherent flavors of Mexican chocolate — the hint of cinnamon and other spices that are present — give you a tremendous number of options when it comes to creating desserts," explains Smedstad.
Changing your dessert menu to incorporate seasonal fruits is one way to create some excitement and variety, chefs say.
"But be careful. Seasonal fruits can inspire your menu, but if you're using them at the wrong time of year, it would be a mistake. Purveyors will still sell it, but that doesn't make it a good fruit," warns Smedstad.
Cuatro changes its dessert offerings weekly, and Elias says the entire menu also changes with the seasons.
For spring, Cuatro will offer a Tarta de Fresa, a strawberry tart filled with vanilla custard and topped with fresh strawberries and an apricot glaze. "We'll also offer a wild honey ice cream with a mixed berry sauce," she adds.
Chefs say it's possible to create a new dessert while remaining true to a region's authenticity.
 Restaurants are putting new twists on traditional desserts like the flan pictured above. Adding an almendrado "float" the way Sala Sabor has done, or flavoring flan with coconut or chocolate as Karen Hursh Graber does at mexconnect.com, are ways to update this ethnic sweet. |
"If you're a chef, the best thing to do is travel. If you haven't been to Mexico, it's time to go! When I was there, I fell in love with the street candy, and I thought, ‘Can I put something like this into an ice cream?'"
One item that has appeared on Sala Sabor's dessert menu is a pumpkinseed and praline ice cream that Smedstad says was inspired by the street candy of Mexico.
Smedstad credits his coffee and corn cake snack on the beach in Mexico as the inspiration for the Pastel de Elote he introduced at Sala Sabor.
Cuatro's sweet corn vanilla bean ice cream is one of its best sellers. It's made in-house, as are all of Cuatro's ice creams (pistachio praline and chocolate are the others, joining coconut milk, guava and white sangria sorbets).
"Some of our customers want us to sell the sweet corn vanilla bean ice cream by the tub, and we're thinking about it," Elias says. The ice cream, with the bean visible, gets some of its texture from the ground corn, which also lends extra sweetness.
At Cuatro, Elias has put a twist on the traditional Tres Leches (three-milk cake) with a Pastel Cuatro Lech-es. "The fourth milk (in addition to condensed, evaporated, and regular milk) is coconut milk," she explains.
Served along with the airy sponge cake in the Pastel Cuatro Leches is a pistachio tulip cookie — a very thin cookie that's baked and molded almost into a bowl. "It curls up like a flower," Elias says.
Topped with a cinnamon tea mousse, the cake sits inside the tulip cookie which rests on a fruit compote made of seasonal red fruit (such as strawberries or plums). "The last step is to drench the cake with the four-milk sauce," Elias explains.
Chefs say that with the right combination, desserts can be big sellers.
One key is to have variety in your offerings. "You want to have something for everyone at the table," says Smedstad.
Smedstad estimates that desserts account for 10 to 15 percent of Sala Sabor's bottom line. "This is the first time that the restaurant is moving its dessert menu — our dessert sales are increasing every week," he says.
Sala Sabor's top sellers vary week to week, but Smedstad's Torta de Chocolaté (a dense chocolate cake served with Ibarra chocolate mousse) was the first dessert to break into the restaurant's top 10 menu dishes. Past favorites include the refreshing Torta de Frutas de Fresa (pictured on the magazine cover).
At Cuatro, Elias says that while the desserts can be costly to produce, they can also attract customers.
"Because we make all of our desserts in-house, they are very labor intensive," Elias says. That keeps her profit margin on desserts about the same as on regular menu items. "Maybe a little less," she notes.
If you don't have experience with desserts, chefs recommend using resources such as the cookbooks authored by top chefs like Rick Bayless and Diana Kennedy. "You can glean ideas from their recipes, then put your personal touch on them however you'd like," Smedstad says.
"No matter what you do, the important thing is that you don't make something because you think people will want it. You should make it because you believe in it," she says.
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