Otto: tiramisu battle

Well, no one except for my roommate and I knew it was a tiramisu battle, but I assure you it was.

This was Scuderia's tiramisu. So crock of an attempt at a "deconstructed" dessert, or a lazy man's attempt to be fancy. Enter into exhibit: stale ladyfingers, flavored whip cream, some insanely strong espresso. Experience: dip ladyfinger into coffee and scoop up some of the pitiful amount of dessert and experience the contrasting texture of hard ladyfinger scraping the inside of your mouth with very bitter coffee, neither of which is mellowed by the inadequate portion of whipped cream. The whole point of tiramisu is to have it soak in all of the ingredients, and a chef should do something additional when deconstructing a dish, so that there's some level of commentary going on.

At least when D.C. José Andrés makes deconstructed gazpacho, there's all sort of wizardry going on.

Here's Otto's tiramisu, also not fantastic, but after the debacle from Scuderia I was still faintly pleased. The problem with Otto's tiramisu is similar, there hasn't been time for the components to fully meld, as evidenced by the clearly distinct ripples of the whip cream layers. Also, it seemed as if the restaurant used some sort of whole wheat ladyfinger in their recipe. No idea what it really was, but I would preferred something more traditional.

This affogato, however, was spot on.

Otto, One Fifth Avenue (at Eighth Street), 212-995-9559