I believe that the single best dessert a person can have after a satisfying restaurant meal involves walking five to eight city blocks to a nearby ice-cream shop, to get a double scoop on a waffle cone. But, if the mood at the table is rollicking and worth prolonging, or if there are no good ice-cream shops within an appropriate radius, it’s time for the second-best post-dinner dessert: an ice-cream sundae. Despite its inherent maximalism—the visual complexity of piled-high ingredients of varying textures and colors and temperatures and viscosities—a sundae is the most emotionally simple of desserts, and the most honest. It makes no pretense toward nutrition or subtlety: it is a plainspoken statement of delight. The dish is a staple at dining establishments of all genres, cuisines, and price points, owing, in large part, to material factors—it can be put together without the presence of a dedicated pastry chef; its ingredients can be store-bought and will keep virtually forever—and so finding an especially excellent, bespoke specimen is something worth celebrating. Most sundaes are satisfying; only a select subset are truly special. These three are, to me, among the most exemplary in New York, serving as brilliant finishes to any meal—or, as summer really kicks into swing, as mini-meals unto themselves, eaten on their own, at the bar.
Chow Nai Sundae with Pork Floss, at Bonnie’s
Like so many of the things on the menu at Bonnie’s, the chef Calvin Eng’s restaurant of creatively reënvisioned Cantonese cuisine, the ice-cream sundae is referential, rigorous, wacky, and wondrous. A base of vanilla ice cream is nearly invisible beneath an avalanche of toppings: toffee-like buttered peanuts, dusky, husky, malty Ovaltine hot fudge, and bronze cubes of fried milk, a Cantonese treat made from sweetened milk set into a wobbly custard, then sliced into pieces, battered, and deep-fried, so that the exteriors are crisp and the insides sweetly gooey. The cherry on top—there’s an actual cherry on top, appropriately sugary and neon-red, but I mean this metaphorically—is an optional add-on of pork floss, crumbled bits of salty-sweet pork that’s been shredded and dried until it takes on the airy texture of cotton candy. It’s a potent, complexifying addition, lending the sundae a thrumming savory underlayer that lifts every element around it.
Passion-Fruit Sundae, at Gramercy Tavern
The pastry chef Karen DeMasco is a legend among dessert slingers, and a genius of frozen treats. She almost always has a sundae of some sort on the menu at Gramercy Tavern, but she adapts its particulars to the seasons. Right now, before the summertime produce explosion, she’s using passion fruit, with strata of fresh pulp studded with poppy-crunchy seeds, vanilla ice cream, passion-fruit sorbet, coconut tapioca pearls, and shards of lime-scented meringue. Each bite delivers an abundance of flavors, shapes, and temperatures. The dish is undeniably a sundae—it contains ice cream, sauces, toppings, even a crowning flourish of sweet whipped cream—but its riot of textures and sophisticated, intoxicating astringency elevate it beyond the typical sundae’s nostalgic Americana. It brings to mind a pavlova, an ultra-messy Eton mess, the fruit-and-condensed-milk swooniness of Korean bingsu—even, fleetingly, a mall-kiosk Orange Julius.
Harry’s Hot-Fudge Sundae, at the Odeon and Café Luxembourg
When it comes to a hot-fudge sundae, sufficiently good ice cream plus sufficiently satiny hot fudge can yield something close to perfection—neither needs to be particularly top-tier, as long as the textures and temperatures are right. The hot-fudge sundae served at the sibling restaurants the Odeon, in Tribeca, and the Upper West Side’s Café Luxembourg goes further. It begins with scoops of ultra-creamy house-made ice cream in your choice of flavors—I somewhat obscenely prefer the peanut butter—plus sugary chunks of praline almonds that add crunch and toasty depth. The dark, slithery-hot chocolate sauce has a bittersweet edge that makes the whole thing feel dimensional and a little bit electric. Like the restaurants themselves, Harry’s sundae has an aura of immortality to it: it’s a dessert of an earlier age, a dessert with a fundamental glamour, a dessert that will never feel wrong. It’s worth noting that at both spots, for three dollars more, you have the option to add banana. This banana is the difference between mere greatness and glory. Add the banana. Always, when presented with the option, add the banana. ♦
