Michael Mina Desserts and Drinks

So the bar at MM? Totally rocks. Nice selection of dessert wines and delicious dessert choices.

The room in general? Too noisy for my taste, were I having dinner and wanted normal decibel conversation with my meal. But for one of those nights when my friends ask me the whiny question, "Where can we get desssserrrrrrt?" it's perfect. The bar serves drinks, dessert, and an a la carte menu of snacks and entrees until midnight.

There are three dessert trios on the menu: this one's citrus-themed.The other two themes are choclate and banana. From the left: lemon ginger cake (with meringue top) with ginger ice cream, lemon cheesecake with meyer lemon sherbet, and key lime napoleon with saffron ice cream. The first pairing was the clear winner. They went together so well, and the ginger sorbet was the perfect consistency, concentration, and sweetness. The cheesecake and sherbet tasted a wee too much like cream cheese for me. The napoleon was crispy layers of pastry filled with lime curd and enrobed in sugar syrup. I would have liked it on its own because I like extremely tart desserts, but it tasted much too tart in comparison to the other desserts. Perhaps they need to put it on leftmost side of the plate so that people try it first and then move on to the sweeter desserts. Or maybe it's designed for right-to-left readers of Arabic, Chinese, and the like (?!). The saffron ice cream tasted nothing like saffron and had tiny strands of mint in it. Lisa didn't taste it at all (thought I was nuts, but hey what's new?), but I thought it had the distinct oceany smell of incredibly fresh sashimi. It really threw me for a loop. I can't explain it.

Root beer float, Mina style. Good root beer, sassafras ice cream, and sassafras sorbet (yes, there were both). As a lover of sassafras, I loved this. Yes, it was sweet, but the most prominent flavor was that of very strong, refreshing sassafras. The warm gooey chocolate chip cookies were amazing as well. Technically speaking, the cookies were less like cookies and more a mass of chocolate and chopped nuts loosely held together by sugar and flour. Awesome, even cold the next morning with coffee. So we kept asking the wait staff "What's so special about the root beer float?" and no one gave us a real answer. They need to just say it: it's GREAT! So comforting, so familiar, and yet so fancy. You've never had a root beer float like this, yet it really makes you feel like a kid in a candy shop. Fantastic. I would not hesitate to order this down home (for Mina) dessert again; it's the kind of thing that would pick you up on a blue day.

You're thinking, "7 desserts for two people?!" Yeah, it was overkill. We need to learn to share.

Michael Mina Website