Caviar is elevating desserts with a sprinkle of salinity on ice cream, pastries, cakes and other sweet treats. Caviar confections are popping up on restaurant menus everywhere from the Beluga-filled donut at Barcelona’s Disfrutar—which recently topped the World’s 50 Best Restaurants List—to an array of enterprising eateries across America.
These sturgeon roe treats are just the latest sign that caviar courses are evolving from traditional blini and crème fraîche pairings to showier presentations, including Instagram-friendly “caviar bumps” and caviar-bedecked chicken nuggets. Now caviar desserts are here to offer even sweeter relief for fish egg aficionados.
Evan Hennessey, the owner and chef at The Living Room in Dover, New Hampshire, which has served caviar ice cream dishes since 2019, said the desserts have a distinctly elemental appeal.
“It’s quite simple really, it’s salt,” said Hennessey, a three-time champion on the Food Network’s Chopped. “And in this case, a wonderful pop of oceanic salinity that people crave. I think ice cream is exceptional because of the texture difference. The creaminess of the ice cream allows the texture of the caviar to stand out.”
Chef Rodrigo Fernandini of Manhattan’s Artesano, which serves Osetra caviar atop queso fresco ice cream, echoed those salty sentiments. “The queso fresco is very creamy and buttery,” he said. “But when you put in the saltiness of the caviar, it’s like an explosion of flavor. I think it works very well.”
Pearl Street Caviar in Red Hook, Brooklyn currently has several standout caviar desserts. The refreshing Pineapple Nieve is comprised of shaved frozen pineapple, sweet cream and coconut flakes finished with Keluga caviar, while the Caviar Mochi Bite is an ice-cold blast of purple sweet potato Mochidoki ice cream with a dollop of Siberian Select caviar. The sustainably sourced caviar cafe is also launching a caviar coconut cream popsicle collaboration this summer with La Newyorkina, a nearby shop that handcrafts Mexican sweets.
Pearl Street founder Craig Paige explained how his team selected the right roe for each dessert. “We chose Keluga caviar for the Pineapple Nieve for the pure contrast that it would provide on the palate,” he said. “The buttery and nutty flavor of Keluga stands up to the sweet tartness of frozen pineapple. For the sweet cream mochi, we leaned heavily into the rich and indulgent taste. Siberian Select is the perfect choice as it holds up to heavier pairings and still has a velvety finish.”
Caviar Russe, a Michelin-starred Manhattan monument to all things sturgeon roe, finishes its 11-course Grand Tasting Menu with a seasonal caviar dessert. The Madison Avenue eatery’s most popular after-dinner offering is the Caviar Canelé, which upgrades the classic caramelized French pastry with Osetra caviar, crème anglaise and buttermilk gelato.
Further downtown, the finale of the 15-course tasting menu at East Village omakase den Bar Miller is a scoop of maple ice cream adorned with Supreme-grade Sterling Caviar. Out on Long Island’s North Fork, Claudio’s Waterfront serves a $150 Caviar & Cream dessert that combines a lemon scone, strawberry compote, mint chocolate mousse and lemon whipped cream with a smattering of Oscietra Classic caviar.
Miss River at the Four Seasons Hotel in New Orleans puts a Big Easy spin on the trend with an $85 Creole Cream Cheese Ice Cream topped with Golden Osetra caviar, along with a sweet corn ice cream and caviar summer special. Island Creek Oysters in Duxbury, Massachusetts—long renowned for its superior selection of mail-order bivalves—has a caviar dessert at its Winsor House restaurant in the form of olive oil cake with orange curd, sour cream gelato and White Sturgeon caviar.
Caviar desserts aren’t just an East Coast phenomenon, either. San Francisco’s newly-launched Caviar Café features a Choux au Craquelin made from crunchy puff pastry—inspired by a Mexican concha sweet bread—that’s filled with a lemon vanilla crème fraîche and crowned with dehydrated strawberry dust and Golden Osetra caviar. Also in San Francisco, Le Fantastique whips up two housemade eclairs with smoked onion and maple fondant and a choice of either Keluga or Golden Osetra caviar on top.
To further whet your appetite for caviar desserts, check out the slideshow above.