Artfully Chocolate Kingsbury Confections Logan Circle: “Sinful Chocolate Cake”

Bill

This would be an excellent cake for a coffee shop or traditional café.   However, it comes just short of the expectations for the specialty chocolate café that is Artfully Chocolate Kingsbury Confections.  The cake portion is slightly dry, just noticeably stale, and a bit light on flavor.  Those small failings would still allow the cake to rank above average at most restaurants, even if paired with mediocre frosting. 

This cake’s frosting ranks better among frostings than the cake portion does in its category.  Its flavor is powerful enough to counterbalance the cake portion’s lack thereof.  The frosting strikes a tasty balance of cocoa and sugar with a chewy texture.  It’s applied to the cake in a perfect portion and presentation.  The frosting redeems the overall dish.   

I would order this cake without the whipped cream or chocolate sauce.  Both elements always add just more than zero taste to a dish.  They’re used almost purely for presentation; to create a visual impression of decadence.  DCDesserts writers and readers are too smart for such visual trickery.  The whipped cream might contaminate your cake with flat milky flavor.  The chocolate sauce, that cheap, lazy stand-in for fudge sauce that’s left after you finish the cake, only serves to remind you how great the frosting was.

1529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
(202) 387-2626

Google map & reviews (3.5/5)

Washingtonian

Washington Post (Reader: 3/4)

Washington City Paper

Examiner

Yelp (3.5/5)

D.C. Foodies

14th & You

Woodside Deli: Chocolate and Strawberry Milkshakes

Josh

There are two absolute facts in milkshake consumption, namely thickness and ice cream quality. Before anyone begins to question my expertise, I want to make clear that there can certainly be excess (sprinkles, fudge, brownie bits, etc) that obviously increase the delightfulness of this wonderful treat, but without the basics, excess, is simply that. The Woodside Deli has been a Silver Spring, MD, staple since 1947, and the décor screams it. One fun aspect of dining is, perusing the 1924 Cleveland Plain Dealer front page conveniently located in the men’s restroom. Obviously, a gender-restrictive luxury.

The deli itself is one of those awesome "we can make anything ever conceived" restaurants with a very extensive menu. The highlight for me was of course the Old Fashioned Thick Milkshakes. Only available in three flavors, chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla your options are limited, but a wise man once told me to stick to what you do best, and apparently that's what's going down here. A hard thing to really "screw up," milkshakes are not really an exotic or sexy dessert.  However, there's a balance with all successful cuisines and the Woodside’s milkshakes are the exact type of thick that allows both fluid movement through a straw and/or consumption with a spoon; quite distinguishable in fact from simply eating regular ice cream, a must in the frozen- milk trade. Therein lies the yin and yang of a great shake. The consistency is crucial and often taken for granted. Not here, not ever, and for that, I applaud and highly recommend a quick stopover. Grab a light sandwich and prepare yourself for a very filling dessert, one that comes with the blending cup on the side, the way our ancestors drank their shakes. The only way to really drink them!

9329 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20993

(301) 589-7055 

Google map & reviews (1.5/5)

Washingtonian 
Also, Todd Kliman recommended Woodside Deli’s chocolate milkshakes in a June 8, 2010 online chat:

One place I know that does chocolate malteds is The Woodside Deli, in Silver Spring. They're good. The food? Sometimes good, sometimes not so, but I like the shakes and I like the texture of the place, the old Vargas girls up on the wall in the back room, the black-and-white memorabilia.

Washington City Paper (3/5)

Metromix

Yelp (3.5/5)

Papa Razzi: Brownie Sundae

Bill

The Papa Razzi brownie sundae is not just one of my DC favorites; it’s the best I’ve found in the world. 

Each of the four individual elements is perfect, and the flavor, temperature, and texture combination is even better than the sum of its parts.  The candied walnuts are flavored so thoroughly that the taste is strong nearly through to their centers.  The vanilla gelato is among the best you’ll find, especially in the U.S.  It provides a surprisingly smoother texture than would the traditional ice cream.  The brownies consistently strike the rare mix of balanced physical composition (neither cakey nor oily), and powerful chocolate flavor, at which perfection is found.  The world-beater in this divine dish, however, is the unique chewy not-exactly-fudge sauce that fills the role of traditional fudge sauce.  This sauce has an amazing taste and unique texture that’s smoother than fudge sauce, but still thick and chewy enough to fabulously compliment the gelato and brownies.

As a bonus, this dish is presented in an inviting choose-your-own-adventure manner.  The brownies and nuts can easily be separated from the rest of the dish to facilitate the dish’s painstakingly equal distribution among multiple diners.  If you choose to go the distance and enjoy this dish yourself, you’re free to mix these elements to create your customized tonic to cure what ails you.

I order the brownie sundae with extra sauce and no whipped cream.  Because the sauce is the most divine element of this dish, you should get plenty of it.  As usual with whipped cream, the relatively flavorless and superfluous cream can dull the flavor of the other spectacular elements of this dessert.

1064 Wisconsin Avenue
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 298-8000

Google map and reviews (3.5/5)

Washington Post (Critic: 4/4; Reader: 4/4)

Urban Spoon (86% like it)

Yelp (3/5)

Brasserie Beck: Gateau of Chocolate

Josh

First a disclaimer... While I pride myself on my impartial journalism, ironically my very first entry to DCdesserts comes via a restaurant that a close friend works at. Nonetheless, it is my civic responsibility to report the truths about said desserts in the hope that our new-found blog will act as the checks and balances for the local culinary faire. Wild Bill and I share a passion for the sweeter things in life, in his case brownies and red velvet cake, and in mine milkshakes and donuts (quite exotic, I know!) To begin my inaugural voyage into the craft of food critiquing I was lucky enough to have been a VIP of sorts at the restaurant, who through my friend was given a few courses gratis! Dessert actually came as a surprise, sent out by the kitchen staff, to commemorate the pre-anniversary of my upcoming October 1, 2011 wedding. In terms of appealing to both mine and Wild Bill's tastes, they couldn't have chosen better...

The gateau of chocolate was a very brownie-like dessert.  It had a very nice presentation, highlighted by what appeared to be an artistic usage of fruit sauces. The gateau was rather tasty, with a strong hint of rasberry chocolate in the center... The highlight for me was a base layer of hardened chocolate that accentuated each bite with a crunch. This offset the natural gooeyness that is not typically my favorite aspect of any brownie-like substance... For perspective, imagine a brownie that appears to have true density to it, only to discover that in fact it is a lot more souffle than brick... The worst part of the experience occurs when you insert the fork for the first time, only to realize that the structure and mass are far less pronounced then they appear.

While tasty, and certainly appreciated, the raspberry seemed to overpower the milk chocolate base as each bite went along, and I grew a little weary and bored with it... 

1101 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20005

(202) 408-1717

Google map and reviews (4/5)

Washingtonian (2/4; Best Restaurants Rank: 80)

Washington Post (Critic: 2.5/4; Readers: 2.5/4)

Washington Times

Urban Spoon (88% like it)

Yelp (4/5)

Welcome to DCDesserts

These are exciting times in DC as the city slowly starts developing the quality and number of culinary offerings expected of a metro area of its size and importance.  However, the restaurant renaissance hasn't improved desserts as much as it should have.  Dessert is an afterthought at many of the newer establishments that are otherwise top restaurants.  You don't have to do dessert well to be a top restaurant in DC.  Wayward reviewers too often confuse the lesser virtues of "nearby," "open late," or even "mixes sugar and fat with chocolate" with "excellent dessert."  DCDesserts is here to fix that.

DCDesserts' Bill and Josh believe dessert should be appreciated at least as much as other food and wine.  We're here to educate and serve the public; to help people distinguish the divine from the great, the good, and the poor; to promote the happiness that comes from dessert; and even to discuss the philosphy of dessert.

We'll share our favorite DC desserts and top dessert spots in a series of reviews.  We'll suggest where not to go, and what not to try.  We won't steer you wrong.  Finally, as Josh said, "the worst that can happen is that we eat a lot of brownies."