Spot Dessert Bar

Self-taught Pichet Ong likes to blend. Perhaps that's simply a job requirement for a pastry chef, but the desserts at his latest restaurant, Spot Dessert Bar, really do mix it up: Asian flavors with American classics, whimsy with seriousness, a barnyard aesthetic (just about all the wood is repurposed) with uptown appeal, tastes and textures and colors. Eating at Spot was an intellectual exercise: the brain resisted even as the taste buds began to relent.

After sampling a passion fruit soda, almost like a carbonated smoothie, we choose three dessert tapas: chocolate marquis with mango tapioca balls and yakult ice cream --- the sourness of the fruit offsetting the cake's crumbliness; yuzu eskimo with oreo soil, strawberries, and passion fruit --- basically an ice cream sandwich; and a five spiced fennel cake with a caramel swirl and scoop of peach frozen yogurt --- a handcake that marvelously mixed sweet and savory.