Sweet on Girl & the Goat

I mean, who isn’t? If you’ve been lucky enough to dine at the James Beard Award nominated-restaurant, you understand the deliciousness that is Stephanie Izard’s hiramasa crudo, goat, veal and pork sugo, housemade bread slathered with f’ing chicken liver butter (I mean, sweet Jesus), and every other savory dish served up by a killer staff. But lately it’s the sweet side of the menu that has me clamoring to repeatedly score a last minute seat at a communal dining table. And even when that does happen (try after 9:30PM early in the week), and you think you’re too full for dessert, the menu arrives taunting you with evil promises of bourbon apples with maple fat gelato and sesame semifreddo with pork fat donuts. Just like the savory side of the menu, these surprising flavor and ingredient combinations take the desserts at G & G off the charts..namely two I was lucky enough to enjoy in the last few weeks. The first is the blood orange sorbet with parsnip pot de crème, moist pistachio cake, crumbly cornmeal crust and a cluster of crisp candied parsnips that (in this photo) mask the perfection that is this dessert (photo does not do justice, just go, order before its taken off, repeat).

Just when one vegetable-tinged dessert blew me away, along came another just this past weekend, the bittersweet chocolate with shiitake gelato, mushroom gastrique and toffee crème fraîche. The wacky combo seems a little too out there to work and it does get just a little messy on the plate, but no matter—the balance of bittersweet chocolate cake, hefty scoop of just slightly mushroom-flavored gelato (it’s actually delicious on its own), subtle mushroom gastrique and crunchy bits of toffee and a drizzle of rich crème fraîche is so rich and perfect it’s downright ridiculous, and currently on top 5 favorite desserts of all time. Girl & the Goat, 809 W. Randolph St., 312.492.6262