Sweet Treats: La Silhouette

Last week, I had the pleasure of a dessert tasting in the kitchen at La Silhouette, a new French/American restaurant that recently opened in Hell’s Kitchen. Pastry Chef Vivian Wu, or the Viv-ster as she was more commonly known in her pastry youth, has a lovely, well-rounded menu. Don’t worry — I made sure to taste everything. My favorite dish, hands down was the Triple Orange Beignets — a trio of fried-to-order munchkin bites filled with orange pastry cream, served with chocolate-orange sauce and salted caramel ice cream. Honestly, why would you even bother to eat a donut that wasn’t fried just for you? And it certainly wasn’t bad to have my cream refilled halfway through, a bit like the second course of warm brioche at Per Se when you’re halfway through the foie gras. Oh wait, I shouldn’t have mentioned that. I guess it’s just a perk from all those years of torture I gave her.

Of course, my life wouldn’t be complete without chocolate so I was drooling over the Chocolate Chestnut Mille Crêpes with chestnut chantilly, marron glacé, chocolate streusel and vanilla bean ice cream. It’s a cake made up of what appeared to be at least twenty layers of chocolate crêpes and chestnut cream with chunks of candied chestnuts inside.

Move over Lady M, there’s a new crêpe cake in town. I might however be forced to take a trip up there, just to compare. There was also a delicious Moelleux au Caramel, a warm and slightly molten caramel cake served with a brown butter apple cranberry crumble and crème fraîche ice cream and the La Silhouette Cheesecake with a pineapple mango salad and coconut milk glace. Petit fours included passion fruit and coconut marshmallows and tiny perfect cannelé (see several posts back if you don’t know what these babies are). So go and support my kid (someone’s got to pay to send her to college) and have some delicious desserts. With spring eventually coming, I’m sure that will be lots of new morsels as well.