Dessert at Hook

Posted by Edmund in Bakeries & Sweets, Washington, DC | 0 comments

Hook (Dessert Review)
Seafood
Entrées run $25-$32. Desserts are $9. Expect to pay about $45-$55 with an appetizer and dessert.

3241 M Street Northwest
Washington, DC 20007-3616

Hook is one of the more famous restaurants in the Georgetown area, combining class and elegance, with all-around good seafood fare in the area. It’s not normally considered one of the best restaurants in DC, but, then again, Georgetown isn’t the culinary center of Washington, DC, so Hook is about as good as restaurant food gets in the area. It recently has received a lot of attention, though, for one particular part of the menu, and it’s surprisingly not the menu. Instead, it’s the desserts, as D.C.’s pastry chef of the year, Heather Chittum, is actually the mastermind behind the desserts here. That’s quite a reputation! And, as some readers may have guessed by now, dessert just so happens to be my favorite course of an entire meal. Needless to say, I had to check out Hook, if for nothing else than the dessert.

So I decided to head over on a Saturday night before hitting up a nearby bar with some friends. I wasn’t there to eat dinner or to do a full-fledged restaurant review—I just wanted the house specialty Lingonberry Torte dessert, for which Heather Chittum is renowned. I immediately went to the bar, pulled up a stool, ordered my dessert with an interesting “chocolate” dessert wine (which actually was a great complement).

Before I get on to the review of the dessert, though, I do need to give a disclaimer: I dislike almost all berry desserts. I really am not a fan of fruity, sour flavors, since they tend to overshadow the sweetness of a dish, which is my favorite part of the dessert. So for me to like any berry dessert is saying a lot.

But when it came to this dessert, none of that mattered—even I absolutely loved it. Everything was perfectly balanced. The berry flavor came through very strongly, as the torte itself was filled with what seemed like a layer of lingonberry jelly. It wasn’t too sour, though, because the small pastry shell had a delicious crumbly doughiness to it, with a nice crisp, buttery crunch and an excellent nuttiness, even though I don’t think there were actually any nuts in it. There was also some sugar powdered on top, but it was just enough so that the sourness of the berries was controlled without the sugar becoming a very noticeable flavor at all. Rather, it seemed as if the nuttiness itself was the main counterbalancing flavor.

That combo of crunchy nuttiness, slight sweetness, and gooey sourness gave this treat a near perfect balance, but it was still tending towards the sour when eaten on its own, so it needed a final counterbalancing component. That component came in the form of the small scoop of rich Taleggio cheese ice cream served on the side, which gave it just the right milky and slightly sweet creaminess, with a refreshing coolness, and a very slight cheese taste that really gave this cake just an added bit of complexity to really make it phenomenal.

Overall, though I only tried one dish at Hook—and a dessert at that!—I really can’t complain. I have eaten almost no desserts in Washington, DC and very few in my whole life that displayed that type of technical excellence and balance. I can’t say it’s my favorite dessert, since I’m still not a berry fan, but I can say that it easily surpasses the hype. Chef Chittum fully merits her honor in my book.

Verdict, for the famous Lingonberry Torte: 4.7/5.0 (judging solely by its technical excellence). For someone like myself who dislikes berries, it is definitely not the ideal dessert, and for my personal taste, I’d give it more of a 4.3. This is, however, one of the best berry dessert I’ve ever tried.