Timeless Modern Desserts at Delmonico’s
The Gilded Age lives on.
To enjoy the many excellent desserts at Delmonico’s in the Financial District, a 187-year-old steakhouse that reopened under new management last fall, you could eat a full steak dinner and save room for dessert, but you don’t have to. The restaurant has an adjacent bar room and, as I’ve quickly come to learn, sitting at the bar at off-peak hours with a slice of cake is one of the most underrated joys of dining out.
I’ve had dessert at the bar in various restaurants by now and no bartender has been as gracious and as unbothered as the bartender at Delmonico’s. I showed up around two o’clock on a wintry January afternoon where the only things dry about this room were the aged Delmonico steaks and straight-up martinis. I asked for a slice of chocolate cake, nothing else, and there was no passing attempt at a joke, no perceptible casting of judgment.
Is this the true nature of hospitality? Where every appetite is accommodated, without question or comment? We may not be living in Delmonico’s heyday of the Gilded Age, but I can’t imagine a more charmed life.
Delmonico’s restaurant dates back to 1837 and is often referred to as the first fine dining restaurant in America. More interesting, to me at least, is that Delmonico’s claims to be one of the first restaurants where women could dine alone, without the company of men. As a restaurant critic whose job it once was to eat out alone every day, I appreciate this egalitarian legacy as heartily as I am offended by the social norms it challenged.
In the restaurant’s impressive list of firsts, few mention that Delmonico’s began as a pastry shop. One of the founding brothers, Peter Delmonico, was a pastry chef. Before hosting grand banquets for kings and kingmakers, Delmonico’s sold coffee and quality desserts to businessmen in the neighborhood.
Sitting alone in what was once referred to as “The Citadel,” I considered my chocolate cake, a remnant of a bygone golden era. Literally, the slice was gilded with bits of gold leaf alongside a more sensible pinch of flaky salt. The upright wedge showed off six alternating layers of soft devil’s cake and silky chocolate mousse. The seventh layer, a fudgy glaze, gave the cake a glossy sheen. A swirl of chocolate cassis sauce was bright and cutting. There is no match for the frank decadence of a good American steakhouse chocolate cake and Delmonico’s delivers, abundantly.
Vanilla is a timeless pairing with chocolate cake, but the slice at Delmonico’s comes with smooth malted milk ice cream, referencing a more specific period of nostalgia. Apparently, malted milk powder was invented by an Englishman in Chicago in the 1870s, right around the time Delmonico’s was hitting its stride within New York’s high society.
The Delmonico’s of today is a loose continuation of the original. After a series of expansions, ownership changes, and legal filings I couldn’t quite wrap my head around, the restaurant reopened last September with a refreshed dining room and new menus. Chef Edward Hong was brought on to reinterpret the classics (gochujang appeared in at least two dishes on the brunch menu) while pastry chef Miro Uskoković was hired as a consultant to revamp dessert.
Uskoković was most recently the executive pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern, a job he held for almost ten years. As a consultant at Delmonico’s, he designed a pastry menu that could be executed without his daily supervision (that responsibility falls to pastry sous chef Jesus Romero). This made my fact checking call a bit like a game of telephone; I recalled mango sorbet in one dessert where Uskoković intended coconut. In the end, mango turned out just fine.
The Baked Alaska is an icon on the menu, reportedly invented at Delmonico’s in 1867. Its domed peak is pre-torched and while I didn’t miss the tableside pyrotechnics, I did wish the flames had indulged a little longer, giving the sugars in the meringue a chance to mellow out, get deep. The banana gelato at its heart was slick like frozen banana puree, sitting on a sliver of walnut cake. A chunky apricot compote whispered the floral notes of chamomile, though Uskoković said there was no actual chamomile in the recipe. Taken as a whole, it tasted like banana bread at breakfast.
The Baked Alaska costs $24 while the rest of the desserts are priced at $17. You could split any one of them as each is satiating enough to share, but it’s so much more fun to load up your table with desserts, like my family did at brunch. My daughter thinks I have the best job in the world.
The coconut cream pie held my attention best, which says more about me than anything else. Its rough cookie crust was cushioned by a plush coconut custard and a spiral of fresh whipped cream. Sitting in a steakhouse, the pie amounted to a different sort of carnal pleasure. A stinging passionfruit sauce and musky mango sorbet kept this lush plate in check.
In the case of a New York-style cheesecake, the formula is reversed and a little sugar tones down the aromatic, limey astringency of yuzu. The flavor was so potent, so generous, it suggested a budget other pastry chefs might envy, as did the sour pop of finger limes — the pastry chef’s caviar — hidden in a thin film of yuzu curd. While rich, I didn’t find this dessert too tart. Then again, I love citrus so biting, it feels like it’ll dissolve the enamel right off your teeth. I’ve noticed this about food people.
The steakhouses I usually go to dole out simple slices of pie or cake for dessert, which requires little more forethought than a warmed knife. Don’t get me wrong, I love a wedge of Junior’s cheesecake after steak at Wolfgang’s. But Uskoković’s plated desserts stand out as full compositions. They are little universes of balance and texture, thoughtful and complicated, but not overdone — a dead giveaway that a pastry chef has been on payroll (also, Uskoković’s name is all over the menu).
On the way out, I noticed an illustrated sketch of a couple leaving Delmonico’s in a horse-drawn carriage. It’s one of a few references to the restaurant’s earliest days, when Delmonico’s was a status symbol of fine European appetites. Back then, I doubt its founders imagined a future where gochujang and yuzu would exist alongside Béarnaise and balsamic. And they probably wouldn’t have dreamed of the day when a woman, like me, could dine on chocolate cake alone at the bar.
Delmonico’s
56 Beaver St
New York, NY 10004
(212) 381-1237
Lunch & dinner daily