Reminiscing about dessert...

Yeah, 5 posts in one day. Might as well get all this writing out of my head as I settle down and get ready for the upcoming week of work.

Several years ago, my buddy Little Randy always organized an annual group outing to Lincoln Center for their Dessert Festival. This would always fall around May or June, usually around the same time as their Mostly Mozart festival or their Midsummer's Night Swing one.

The premise of the Dessert Festival was simple. I forget the exact price of the ticket now, but the first year we did it, it was around $20, and I think it eventually went up to $40, give or take. Said ticket will get you admittance to, for lack of a better phrase, an outdoor dessert pig out within the Lincoln Center grounds. All sorts of restuarants and bakeries and cafes (totalling about 40 or so), from such established places like The Russian Tea Room to little cafes in Brooklyn would have a table set up and on it would be a dessert for you to sample.

And we're talking amazing variety and taste here. You name it: cookies, cakes, custards, ice creams, sorbets, dessert wines, etc. Every dessert imaginable and known to men could be found in the festival; the list just went on and on and on and on. Some were your standard favorites, others were your more exotic fare, but heck, you had to try them all. Or at least attempt to.

We always looked forward to it; around early May, the anticipation to get the email from Little Randy with the details would grow by the day. When festival day arrived, we'd have a group of 10 or more friends, ready for some sweetness. And how.

4,5 years in a row we did it, but sadly, I think either Lincoln Center does not do it anymore, or they include it as part of a bigger package of events (read: more expensive). But man, for those 4 years or so, a summer night in New York City was never sweeter.