They don’t have a name for this dessert at 1618 West Seafoood Grille, but I have one: Chocolate Orgasm. The description alone taps into primal pleasure centers: “Warm soft chocolate cake with pecans, caramel, raspberry sauce and whipped cream.”
Be honest — just the three simple words above, when combined, compelled you to read this post. Warm. Soft. Chocolate.
Now, I won’t take the time and space here to tell you about women and chocolate. If you don’t know already, you haven’t been paying attention. Suffice it to say that chocolate is to a romantic meal what Barry White is to music. So there was no question that our anniversary dinner Saturday night would end with something made of chocolate.
I’d like to describe what it looked like in more detail, but the sensations that followed blotted out any clear memories of its mere appearance. I recall that it was small, round, and medium brown on the outside with the barest trace of a crust. I know that it was topped with whipped cream, and surrounded by caramel and raspberry sauce. But what happened next stopped any further examination.
I was distracted by late-arriving coffee, so Herb sank his fork into the cake first, producing a lava-like flow of — what else — warm, soft chocolate. Liquid chocolate, soft bits of cake, whipped cream and raspberry sauce combined for a taste sensation that left all the death-by-chocolates and mile-high chocolate cakes behind, like the sweet but distant memory of your first-grade boyfriend.
We offered via the waiter to adopt, or be adopted by, the chef. And got a table-side visit from the general manager, who explained that, like so many genius inventions, this one happened by accident. It started in New York restaurants that were making invidivual chocolate cakes. They unintentionally undercooked them, but the patrons liked it so much, they started doing it on purpose, and voila! The chocolate orgasm.
For me personally, this ranks right up there with the discovery of electricity and Penicillin.
I won’t elaborate any more on the events of our anniversary date, except to say that the meal — and especially the dessert — at 1618 West was, shall we say, inspirational.