A short dessert list
Chocolate Lava Cake. Nutella Pizza. Affogato.
Three, which is fewer than most kitchens offer and more than most tables need.
The one everyone orders
The lava cake, obviously, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is the dessert that requires no negotiation at a table of four, because nobody has ever objected to it.
The Nutella pizza is the one that makes people look up. It uses the same dough we bake all day, which is the whole idea: if the base is good enough to carry a Margherita it is good enough to carry chocolate and hazelnut. It arrives cut into pieces and it is not a dessert you order for yourself.
The one we would push
The affogato, which is a scoop of ice cream with a shot of hot espresso poured over it at the table.
It is the smallest thing on the list and the one most people walk past, and it is the best answer to a particular problem: you have eaten well, you are not hungry, you do not want the evening to end, and a slab of chocolate cake is more than you can face.
An affogato is coffee and dessert arriving as the same object. It takes four minutes. It is also the only dessert on the list that gets better the longer you sit and talk over it, because the melting is the point rather than a failure of timing.
The other ending
There is no rule that says dessert has to be sweet.
Order another glass of something instead. Move to the bar if your table is wanted. On Friday and Saturday the kitchen winds down well before the bar does, and the last hour of the night in this room, when the food is finished and nobody is in a hurry, is quietly the best hour we have.
