Spectacular Chinese Desserts at Hutong
Dazzling presentation meets taste and technique at this unexpected destination for dessert.
Hello! I’m back with another free read today about the dessert menu at Hutong restaurant, which I think is a rare and precious find in New York. Also, I owe a huge thank you to the executive pastry chef at Hutong, Conn Zhang. She was on maternity leave when I reached out for a fact-checking interview yet she was still willing to answer some questions over email. Women in this industry are truly amazing!
Oh, and the answer to last week’s trivia question is Partybus Bakeshop in the Lower East Side.
The first thing I saw was smoke. It gushed dramatically over the edges of a basin filled with dry ice as a server marched importantly to our table to deliver the conspicuous vessel. In his hands was the Treasure Bowl, a plateau of desserts and other sweet curios from the menu at Hutong, a Chinese restaurant in midtown Manhattan.
Hutong is a high-end restaurant chain specializing in northern Chinese cuisine. It is run by Aqua Restaurant Group, which was founded in Hong Kong, with outposts there, in London, Dubai, New York, and Miami. That sort of global footprint should tell you a lot about Hutong (if not, consider this: restaurants with similar geographic portfolios include clubby clubsteraunts like Zuma and Hakkasan).
Or maybe the address will tell you all you need to know? Hutong sits at the foot of One Beacon Court in Midtown, home to a few Bloomberg offices and ultra-luxury condominiums. Before it was Hutong, the space was occupied by Le Cirque restaurant, which had relocated there from its original perch on the Upper East Side in 2006. Le Cirque was once the epitome of New York’s obsession with French and Italian taste and ostentatious fine dining.
The last time I ate in this dining room, in 2016, it was still a Le Cirque show, but its storied heyday was clearly over. By 2019, Hutong had taken its place.
The inference I’m trying to make here is that Hutong is not your average Chinese restaurant. Rather, it’s a global luxury brand with the kind of gravitas needed to fill a cavernous Midtown dining room that only a legendary New York restaurant like Le Cirque seemed capable of filling. Perhaps this is also why it has one of the most impressive dessert menus of any Chinese restaurant in the city. When you’re going big, sometimes the only question is: why not?
There are five desserts on the menu at Hutong, plus a selection of ice cream and sorbet. Based on some internet sleuthing, the Treasure Bowl seemed like the most efficient way to eat through everything. It comes with three full-sized desserts plus an array of “lucky hidden treasures” for $65 (individually, the desserts range from $6 to $17). Less persuasive, to me at least, was the fact that the bowl would be delivered in a spectacle of surprise and delight.
The showpiece of the Treasure Bowl and the signature dessert at Hutong is called Bao & Soy Milk. I think the name undersells what is a deft construction of soft, toasted sesame-infused Chantilly cream and salted caramel within a paper-thin white chocolate shell shaped to look like a plump steamed bun. The shell yielded with a quick, satisfying crack while the interior revealed a compelling balance of sweet and salty. I couldn’t shake the urge to take another bite.
It was the kind of well-executed trompe-l'œil that reminded me of the French pastry chef Cédric Grolet's lifelike fruit desserts.
Somewhere in the Treasure Bowl is a soy milk ice cream, which is meant to be paired with the Bao dessert. This is an apparent nod to the Chinese morning routine of having something hot and starchy (in this case, the bao) with a cup of fresh soy milk. I am a little shocked to say that this could be the first soy milk ice cream I have ever encountered. Is it really possible that chefs have turned everything into ice cream — except for soy milk?
In any case, even without a competitive set to judge it against, this may have been the best soy milk ice cream I have ever encountered and I would gladly order it on its own, mostly because it tasted like a fresh-pressed swig of the real thing. It was more nutty than milky and there was a noticeable lack of sweetness, which I loved.
The chocolate tart, called Mala on the menu, is also worth ordering a la carte. The palm-sized tart had such an impressively glossy mirror glaze, its burgundy red surface looked lacquered. Beneath that was a thick layer of chocolate mousse and a pocket of Sichuan peppercorn-infused cream. The flavors were intense and lingering; this was a dessert to share and savor.
Most of the desserts at Hutong, whether in the Treasure Bowl or not, are accompanied by a scoop of ice cream. I’d say they all live up to their names in taste, which I’ve learned is a very good compliment (assuming that’s the chef’s goal, of course). You’d be surprised at how many raspberry sorbets taste so little like an actual raspberry.
The sour plum sorbet that came with the Mala dessert was as complex tasting as the fruit itself — it had a vivid lemon-lime flavor with a hint of sour cherry. As it melted, I couldn’t help but think that the syrupy leftovers would be perfect for a refreshing non-alcoholic spritz.
The savory menu at Hutong leans into northern Chinese cuisine with a fair amount of Sichuanese spice peppered throughout. There is dim sum, but the dumplings have thick, wheat-based wrappers. A spicy-tingly flavor profile is ubiquitous, if mild, in dishes like málà chili prawns and poached chicken in chili oil. Above all, though, Hutong is best known for its roast Peking duck, a Beijing specialty.
Writing the dessert menu for Hutong probably required a little more creative license as there isn’t an analogous repertoire of dishes to draw from and dessert itself is rare at Chinese restaurants.
Conn Zhang was aware of this blank slate opportunity when she became Hutong’s executive pastry chef in 2019. As a Shanghai-born, French Culinary Institute-educated pastry chef, she was also uniquely qualified to create a menu that bridged the gap between the flavors of a Chinese pantry and the robust pastry programs of a French restaurant kitchen.
“I was trained in French pastry, but Hutong is a Chinese restaurant, so I always try to integrate Chinese ingredients and my background into each dessert,” she wrote to me over email.
In a dessert she named “Childhood,” Zhang takes a humble rice pudding and turns it into a refined version of itself. While not overtly Chinese, Zhang said the inspiration for the dish, riz au lait, springs from her memories of Shanghai. The creamy dessert hints at butterscotch, which adds sweetness with depth. It is topped with a dark maple granola and a scoop of toasted rice ice cream. “I don’t make straightforward desserts,” she also noted in her email.
I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the desserts at Hutong as much as I did. Perhaps it was the thrill of finding ambitious plated Chinese desserts — an oxymoron to many — created by a Chinese pastry chef. Don’t get me wrong, I love it when chefs cook with a global pantry to express their creativity and curiosity, but it’s dangerously easy for a dish to feel superficial or overly pastiche when an ingredient is used “innovatively” beyond its general culinary scope. I’ve had my fair share of saffron or lemongrass in places where they simply don’t make sense.
Zhang proves that incorporating Chinese ingredients into a Westernized, French-y kind of dessert benefits from some intuitive familiarity. She resisted the temptation to sweeten the soy milk ice cream, to great success. She matched the right amount of Sichuan peppercorn with rich chocolate and cream, smartly taming its spice while complimenting its flavor.
In my opinion, it’s not necessary to order the Treasure Bowl to have the best dessert experience at Hutong (unless, of course, it’s the smoke show you’re after). Beyond the three plated desserts, there was just one extra sorbet, a few waxy chocolate coins, and some jujube-shaped cocoa butter bonbons filled with a sweet liquid — a popular amuse bouche trick I remember from tasting menus, like, 10 years ago. We also found a good luck amulet tucked into the center of our bowl, but I was less than excited about this non-edible tchotchke.
To craft the ideal meal at Hutong while also getting the best value, I recommend starting with the Peking duck and ending with one or two desserts to share. The $65 half duck for two might even be considered a deal. Or, if you’d rather blow it out, there’s a whole flaming duck upgrade for $150 where a chef uses live flame to crisp the skin tableside. Follow that with a profusely smoky Treasure Bowl and you’ve got yourself an epic dinner of fire and ice.
Hutong
731 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10022
(212) 758-4800
Lunch & dinner daily