Nothing baffles Grace Dent more than being deliberately served “stone-cold” bread and butter pudding: “It should obviously be hot. That’s what makes it soft, delicious and yielding. I’ve had that twice.”
While it’s a quick, simple way for a restaurant to conclude a meal, cold bread and butter pudding is, for the Guardian restaurant critic, symptomatic of a wider issue. “Puddings are disappearing in Britain and they have been since the end of lockdown,” says Dent. “I talk about it all the time. That gorgeous moment at the end of dinner when the long list of different puddings comes out, it’s beginning to be a thing of the past.”
There are restaurants that still go big on dessert, from the Ritz where crepes suzette are flambeed at your table, to chain pubs with extensive menus of profiteroles, sundaes and sponge puddings. But in modern, independent restaurants, places serving a disproportionate number of broadsheet critics and, yes, Observer Food Monthly readers, the story is different.
“A reasonable choice of desserts is becoming rare,” agrees Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner. “If I find a proper sponge pudding and a tart involving pastry, where they’ve done something beyond creaming mousses, I’m thrilled. Real pastry work: pastry shells, sponges, savarins, require precision and patience.”
The days of the classic three-course menu have been over for a while. Today, a menu of 20+ sharing plates might include a maximum of four desserts, with some restaurants – given diners are likely to fill up early on savoury dishes – serving just one or two. They are drawn from an increasingly narrow field, as kitchens seek practical dessert formats: a tart case, meringues, parfaits, the ubiquitous panna cotta, which can be made to a high standard in a time-efficient manner, easily plated in-service and – by changing a filling, flavour or garnish – tweaked as the seasons change.
Rather than delving into painstaking sugar work, laminated pastry or tempering chocolate, modern kitchens are more likely to serve you chocolate mousse, homemade ice-cream or arrangements of fruits, yoghurts, creams and crumbles, what Rayner wryly refers to as “a few creamy things in a bowl”.
Key to this is the scarcity of pastry chefs and the salaries good ones now command. Chef Sam Grainger would love to hire one at his acclaimed Liverpool restaurant Belzan but he cannot justify the cost. “For that wage, you could have another head chef and open a couple more days,” he says.
This problem has been decades in the making. Historically, pastry chefs struggled for respect. “Pastry” was often regarded as a frivolous footnote both creatively and financially, given how much take-up of dessert varied.
Writing for the industry website Countertalk last year, pastry chef Taylor Sessegnon-Shakespeare suggested little has changed: “A recurring theme is being told you’re an unnecessary expense.”
These days, few new restaurant kitchens include a dedicated pastry section. Financially, it makes more sense to squeeze in more tables. In turn, the level of knowledge in the industry has declined as many pastry chefs have opted out, preferring to work in patisseries, bakery-cafes or consultancy. “All the pastry chefs I know opened their own businesses during lockdown,” says Grainger.
Good restaurants now have to box clever with dessert. Manchester’s Climat serves four on its menu of 26-ish sharing dishes. Be it a plum frangipane tart with creme fraiche, or a creme caramel with sauternes and golden raisins, those desserts must be achievable without, says executive chef Luke Richardson, “having one person solely dedicated to pastry”.
Rather than wasting time on complicated techniques that, for Richardson, add little, he has Climat focused on nailing a smaller repertoire that reflects his “simple” tastes: “I love a good tart or ice-cream. I’m really happy with sticky toffee pudding.”
Richardson is particularly proud of Climat’s choux buns. They took time to research and develop, and as they bake, “you have to juggle your day around it” (do not open that oven door, chef!). But “it looks impressive. It’s consistent. You can put whatever you want in.”
“I don’t think desserts are dead,” says Richardson, but, in that emphasis on utility and reliability, they are “looking a bit different”.
Across Manchester, Exhibition is a restaurant where you order from three kitchens, each of which serves one dessert. For Baratxuri chef-owner Joe Botham, this was a matter of time, space and staying authentic to his Basque-inspired menu. He sells “a ton” of burnt cheesecake but, “to do more than one dessert was a stretch”, and felt forced, stylistically. In Spain, sweet items are often eaten as snacks rather than pudding.
Do not underestimate such abstract questions of taste, style and sensibility. Grainger does not relish the precision of pastry work. “I don’t have the patience,” he admits, much preferring the latitude and immediacy of savoury cooking. “There’s a finite number of chefs who like to work to absolute exacts,” he says, laughing. “Most of us just like to lash as much butter in a pan as possible.”
Consequently, Belzan’s desserts are executed rigorously – recently a choice of white chocolate cremeux, ice-cream or a peanut caramel choux bun – but its primary creative focus is on savoury dishes. For Grainger, this reflects contemporary tastes. He feels feel people aren’t as interested in dessert. “At points, we’ve gone down to two and no one has said anything.”
Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? If restaurants serve fewer desserts from a familiar pool, you might expect interest to decline. But the limited statistics in this area back Grainger up. In a survey for its 2022 Food Insights report, analysts CGA found that if ordering fewer courses to save money, diners would prioritise mains, starters, then sides, with dessert trailing in fourth. There was also a marginal preference for starter over dessert among those counting calories.
“Generally, I think people are eating less sweet things in restaurants,” says Chet Sharma, chef-founder at London’s BiBi. He has just employed a pastry chef (“after a sommelier, the most difficult role to fill”) because he wants the desserts on his evening tasting menu to excel. But he finds he has to serve only two desserts on his à la carte lunch menu, including a chocolate-coated kulfi lolly, like a mini-Magnum, for those who “want that little sweet kick, rather than a whole dessert”.
On other menus, particularly sharing menus, the dessert’s role is less essential. “You never run in going: ‘I’m starving, send me the dessert menu,’” says Rayner. “Dessert is the part of the meal most likely not to happen.”
Some diners’ habits may also be changing. Lungi Mhlanga recently opened Treats Club in east London and her specialist doughnut cafe, which shuts at 11pm, is drawing a big after-dinner crowd. “Customers will go to the restaurants first, won’t have dessert, then come to us because they know that’s what we specialise in.”
Nationally, such venues are booming. These range from chains, such as Creams and Kaspa’s, geared to families and a younger, multicultural crowd, less interested in socialising around alcohol, to high-end London patisserie cafes such as Cédric Grolet at The Berkeley or Michael Kwan at Cake & Flowers at the Dorchester. The latter are striving to fulfil pastry’s potential to deliver, as Sessegnon-Shakespeare describes it, “a landscape of textures and complex yet harmonious flavours”.
“There’s a lot going on in pastry,” says Rayner, but it’s in stand-alone dessert bars and coffee shops. These are frequently run by pastry chefs who, rather than working long restaurant hours constrained by head chefs and dessert-averse diners, can achieve a better work-life balance and salary, plus more creative freedom, by going it alone.
“Before, if you wanted to make it in food, you earned your stripes under top chefs in the traditional way. That’s changed a lot,” says Mhlanga. The 30-year-old is typical of a new breed working in the “sweet treat” market who have forged a career without ever considering working in restaurants.
Ironically, Mhlanga is now talking to restaurants about collaborations – a growth area, as they seek to give their desserts a creative boost. Graham Hornigold used to run Hakkasan and its sister brands’ pastry operations worldwide. Today, as Smart Patisserie, he designs desserts and menus for various clients, and recently bought high-end event catering business Pretty Sweet, with a view to expanding into supplying hotels and restaurants. “Outsourcing,” says Hornigold, “is the only way forward that I see.”
How dessert is delivered may change, but Hornigold insists: “People always want them. It’s not going away.” In this parlous moment for pudding, that message will stiffen Grace Dent’s resolve. “I’m leading the fightback,” she says. “We want something hot with a jug of custard.”
Sweet spots: five great restaurants for desserts
Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Oxfordshire
Raymond Blanc’s institution got a shake-up in January when Luke Selby took over as executive chef, but the 16-strong pastry section remains under the expert eye of Benoit Blin, who has been turning out magnificent chocolate creations, babas and strawberry tarts here for nearly 30 years.
Quo Vadis, London W1
Jeremy Lee, who has graced the stoves at Quo Vadis since 2012, is a master of sweet things – everybody loves his puddings. If you can resist his justly famous profiteroles, try the buttermilk pudding with lemon curd and strawberry jelly, or one of his delectable almond tarts.
Le Champignon Sauvage, Cheltenham
The desserts at this revered two-star are highly intricate, involving unusual pairings such as blueberry and wood sorrel or mango with Thai green curry sorbet, but the disparate elements cohere beautifully on the plate.
Heckfield Place, Hampshire
Pastry chef Sarah Johnson worked at Chez Panisse in the US before joining Skye Gyngell’s Spring and later Gyngell’s restaurants at this delightful hotel. Johnson’s desserts – ginger cake with gooseberries and lemon cream, or honey custard tart with fried elderflower – are unshowy but perfectly judged, using the freshest ingredients.
Raby Hunt, Darlington
Self-taught chef James Close has been lavished with praise (and Michelin stars) since opening this Co Durham restaurant in 2009, but credit for the fabulous desserts – such as buckwheat mille-feuille with calvados and apple – goes to his pastry-chef wife Maria, who also moulds the skull-shaped chocolate petit fours. Killian Fox