A pop-up sweet stop

Bon Appetit is running with the pop-up shop trend. Since last week, and through Friday, they're hosting a "Supper Club and Café" on 57th Street where you can park it at a communal table (or loungey seat) and nosh a $9 Charlie Trotter salad or $8 Batali sandwich, all the while watching, say, Cat Cora do a cooking demo. It's a decent deviation from your everyday routine.

The savory bits looked good but, naturally, I went for the sweets.

They've imported seven desserts from Claudia Fleming (North Fork Table and Inn), Johnny Iuzzini (Jean Georges), Pichet Ong and Francois Payard. I sampled two.

I've never been to Jean George, but I can now lay claim to fandom for Johnny Iuzzini. (For his sweets, not his sexiness.)
His pineapple polenta cake with ginger does that delicious merging of sweet and savory. The firm, spiced cake has marbled caramelized edges and ginger-y pineapple. Beautiful.

Claudia Fleming's triple chocolate brownie cookie ain't so bad either. (How could it be with a name that includes chocolate, brownie and cookie?) Indeed, it's shaped like a cookie, fudgy like a brownie, and three times as chocolaty as it has any business being. It's another heavenly case of throwing in some nuts to balance out the chocolate intensity. Get the recipe here.

221 West 57th near Broadway