Sweet Cuisine, a New Restaurant in Paris Opens for Just Desserts

Some people say it's better to eat dessert first, or risk otherwise being too full by the end of the meal to even try one. This entirely new concept restaurant is solving your problem, here you only order desserts. As appetizer, main course, and (drum roll) dessert! In the capital of fine food and serious cuisine, the idea seems like a joke, but has become quite popular since this recent opening.

Of course, not everything on the menu is with sugar. In fact, the ingenious use of vegetables in the recipes will have you eat some you would never have tried otherwise, such as beetroot with white chocolate, cranberry compote, and bergamot sorbet. A nice way to have you eat your beets. Another treat is the clementine and quince compote, with hot wine sorbet and coriander foam. Well, my grandma used to make quince jelly, to help us with our digestive tracts she said (and she did not call it so nicely), and I swore off quince a long time ago.

But it's not all sweet and sugared. An unusual mix of pear, roots and Greek yoghurt has a white wine recommendation to be paired with. Another dish of lime, litchi, ginger and grapefruit can be had with litchi juice, and certainly sounds refreshing. And of course the smoked baked Alaska is on the menu, for the real sweet tooth aficionados, and comes with a twist, as it is spectacularly flambé with Japanese whisky. Note: in France, a baked Alaska is called a Norwegian omelet, or une omelette norvégienne - still comes from the cold!

Each dessert is offered with a specific choice of two drinks, with or without alcohol, and includes juices, wines, and teas. A lot of the food creations center on pears and apples, such as the mâche salad with macadamia nuts, wasabi, pear sorbet and pear the fruit, marinated in marjoram.

Here you won't find the typical French cakes and petits fours such as éclairs, religieuses, tarts, and other pastries you would buy in a bakery; this is a new way to eat ordinary foods, but in a gastronomic rendering and a very inventive way. And for those wondering, no, Marie-Antoinette never said that (infamous phrase.)

Restaurant Dessance, 74 rue des Archives, in the 3rd arrondissement; tel: +33-1- 4277- 2352. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays; open 3-11 p.m. weekdays, and 12 p.m.-12 a.m weekends. Métro stop Filles du Calvaire. Two menus are offered, one small and one large, $26 (€19) and $49 (€36.)

Bon Appétit!