On to the next one…

Art Etchells? (Photo: Meme)

There is something about an old favorite. Just like a song, t-shirt, movie, or book; familiarity and comfort can contribute to a dining experience as much as surprise and discovery. We have our favorite restaurants around town that we go to for everything ( Looking at you, Meme) and it’s sometimes hard to break from tradition, so in the ever popular food blogging tradition of making arbitrary lists, here is the list of places we are determined to check out next. Sizzling Mussel withdrawal be damned.

Scoop du Jour featuring Michael Laiskonis

 The Man

Last week, we were watching SA favorite Michael Symon take on Duff Goldman on Iron Chef America when we were a little surprised by Symon’s dessert course.  The battle was “chocolate and chiles”, and Symon’s second dessert was a Chocolate Sherbet with Chocolate Sea Salt Crumble, Tempered Chocolate, and Chocolate Chile Sabayon.  This particular dish rose our eyebrows because of Symon’s plating decisions. Most often, and especially in a very public and artsy venue like ICA, chef’s will opt for the classic football/egg shaped quenelle for any ice cream presentation. Here, Symon put some crumble down in a bowl, and topped it with a big, nearly sloppy scoop of his dark chocolate sherbet.  Symon won the battle and also took the plating category by 3 points. Not the most captivating episode of Iron Chef, but it did get us thinking about Ice Cream and how we expect it to show up when we order dessert.

We reached out to some of our favorite pastry chefs on Twitter to get their opinions. To our surprise, not only did they answer, they expanded on the topic. Pastry demi-god Michael Laiskonis (!)  even joined in the conversation and we got some great insight from some of the greatest minds in pastry on this simple, yet oddly complex, conversation.