By Ann Lemons
Photograph by Katherine Bish
I came late to the pleasures of bread pudding. It was on a visit to New Orleans, where it’s lodged deep in the city’s fabulous food traditions and everybody’s mamma makes it differently. Bread pudding, to my way of thinking, should be light and moist rather than dense. I prefer other sauces to the custardy ones, seeing little sense in putting egg on egg. A good bread pudding ought to be able to make it without sauce, not that any such unembellished dish appears on restaurant tables these days. The add-ins, unless one is, say, raisin-phobic, aren’t make-or-break. But they’re certainly a chance to enhance. I still dream of a bread pudding I had at Emeril’s years ago, dark chocolate with sliced bananas. Bread pudding in St. Louis can be very good. Many salivate over the offerings at Harvest and Annie Gunn’s. But where are the raspberries, the Grand Marnier-scented custard, gingerbread bread pudding? Onward, pastry chefs!
Remy’s Kitchen & Wine Bar
222 S. Bemiston, 314-726-5757
A dense, not-very-sweet square that still managed to be moist, it held apples and golden raisins. The dessert was sauced with a hot caramel-moving-into-butterscotch sauce and a dollop of nutmeggy hard sauce, which was butter whipped with a little sugar and some flavoring. Good, but needs more flavorful apples.
Norton’s Café
808 Geyer, 314-436-0828
Slices of a soft bread pudding studded with nuts and raisins arrived cloaked in a bourbon-laced custard sauce. Unlike many bread puddings, this one tastes better hot than mearely warm. Pleasant enough on a cold night.
Lucas Park Grille
1234 Washington, 314-241-7770
“Caramel apple bread pudding” said the menu. The only caramel was a swirl at the edge of the plate. Nevertheless, the slices of apple were tart, the pudding itself nicely crisp at the edges and the generous puddle of raspberry coulis played well with the other components. The texture and raspberry lifted this one right out of the bowl and into the smiling mouth. Good stuff.
Frazer’s
1811 Pestalozzi, 314-773-8646
Gloriosky! Frazer’s finally put the bread pudding on the permanent dessert list. Stuffed with generous blobs of dark and white chocolate, the crispy bits were almost brownie-like in their texture and taste. The bourbon sauce was not as vigorously alcoholic as it once was, though I’m still deciding whether this is a good or a bad thing. A nice blob of softly whipped cream finished things off. Mmmm.
