The World's Greatest Dessert

Dear Readers:  The following entry is a guest blog from my favorite person.

The World's Greatest Dessert is the Profiteroles served at Mr. B's Bistro on Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  This knowledge is based on years of culinary research as well as our sentimental history with the Mr. B's restaurant. Even my memorable 1980 Paris chocolate souffle can't quite measure up to the Mr. B's specialty.  And like a slick advertising spin doctor, I make this audacious claim since it can only be debated, not refuted legally or scientifically.


This week we drove the southern route from Virginia to Texas both to avoid the winter weather and also visit our good friends in New Orleans and Houston.  During the Crescent City stopover we made the opportunity for dinner with our friend, Martha, at Mr. B's, our favorite New Orleans restaurant.  (The "B" is for Brennan, the most famous multi-generational restaurant family in New Orleans.)  Mr. B's not only has great food which we enjoyed many times when we lived near the Big Easy in the 1980's, but it is also linked to special memories involving our daughter, Sarah.

It has been about 20 years since we ate at Mr. B's, so we couldn't be entirely sure the experience would measure up to the memories.  The restaurant was full on a Wednesday night, but the atmosphere was the same comfortable buzz we remembered.  Thankfully, even the Katrina disaster didn't destroy, or even essentially change, the many French Quarter restaurant landmarks.  Our meals were tremendous, including a nice familiar Oregon wine, excellent service, and especially the WGD capstone.  Their profiteroles were one of the key drawing cards to return to Mr. B's for our one evening meal on this New Orleans trip.  It was a great relief to still find them on the menu.

A profiterole is a baked puff pastry about the size of a golf ball, cut in half, filled with vanilla ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce.  (Mr. B's serves three on a plate suitable either for sharing or gluttony.  On this night Jan and I both chose gluttony.)  We've tried so called profiteroles elsewhere many times in hopes of

matching the Mr. B's excellence, always with some degree of disappointment.  The real thing, to be great, must have each of the three components in perfect harmony.  The pastry has to be baked fresh to a precise degree of stiffness/softness.  The ice cream must not be too hard or too soft.  The sauce can only be a rich dark chocolate.  If the pastry ice cream ball is not the right consistency, the dessert can not be eaten with a fork or spoon without falling apart or shooting off the plate.  It's important to get small bites easily with all the elements present.  We've had many impostors with the pastry too crunchy or too soggy, or the ice cream too hard or melting, or topped with cheap milk chocolate.  Anyway, the recent version was just what we remembered - perfection again.  I was certainly happy with the decision not to share.

The other draw for Mr. B's has to do with specific 1985 memories.  At the time, I worked in downtown New Orleans in a Poydras street skyscraper, a five minute walk from the Quarter.  I invited Jan downtown for lunch on September 25, her birthday.  Jan was pregnant with Sarah, about one week from delivery per her doctor's latest forecast.  We started at Mr. B's for lunch, then walked all around the French Quarter that hot day, through Jackson Square, stopping in Jan's favorite perfumery, Hove, on Royal Street for a birthday gift.  (Jan would have remembered it being hot that day under the circumstances regardless of actual conditions.  I checked the historical data.  That September 25th high was 90 degrees with humidity over 80%, so yeah, it was hot.)  That evening friends invited us to a special birthday dinner at Commander's Palace, considered by many to be the best New Orleans restaurant.  I don't remember much about that dinner because driving home from Commander's, Jan went into labor.  Sarah was born about noon the next day.

Two months later after a couple of successful fast food outings with infant Sarah, we decided to treat ourselves with another visit to Mr. B's.  It was a disaster.  A few minutes after ordering our meals, Sarah had a melt down.  I don't know what triggered the outburst - maybe smells or noises or internal physical distress - but we couldn't shut it down.  Finally, we had to take her outside and wait for our expensive meals being packaged to 'go'.  Anyway, it was our first lesson in the risks and the importance of preparedness when including a small child in adult social situations.  That experience propelled Jan to become an expert child entertainer in nice restaurants.

So, our return visit to Mr. B's this week was an enormous delight, for the good company and wonderful food for sure, but also, to reinforce those 1985 memories associated with the most important single event in our lives so far.  Jan even got to enjoy the Hove Perfumery in person again after many years of relying on mail order shopping.

                                                    Delectably Submitted,

                                                    Drake