I’ve always had a sweet tooth. Chocolate is my passion, ice cream is my indulgence, sweet cream and condensed milk my sin. Put a dessert in front of me and, even when I’m full, I’m more likely to clean the plate than push it away.

Eating on your behalf (and mine), I’ve discovered seven exciting new or recently revamped pastry programs, which I share with you here.

KATA ROBATA, 600 Kirby at Richmond, 713-526-8858, katarobata.com

We all wondered where pastry chef Chris Leung would land after his restaurant project with Randy Rucker fell apart, but it makes sense that he would land at Kata Robata, given his history of collaborating with them for their Umami dinner series. You can tell he’s been aching to get back into the groove of things after his eight-month hiatus.

Already he’s rolled out a new pastry menu with fun items like chocolate pudding with black sesame two ways and caramelized bananas and a deconstructed strawberry shortcake with strawberry mousse, strawberry sorbet and togirashi crumble. He’s coming up with specials on an almost-daily basis as well, like the toasted rice panna cotta with coconut milk sherbet, sesame tapioca, edamame and lychee puree topped off with almond cookie crumbles that was posted on Facebook when he made it.

Leung’s creative use of Modernist techniques, which include flash-frozen ice cream and dishes that come out smoking with liquid nitrogen [photo above], never fail to wow. Plans call for specials at least daily or every other day, and he’ll also create specialty one-off desserts whenever someone orders a chef’s tasting menu.

KILLEN’S STEAKHOUSE, 2804 S. Main at W. Walnut, Pearland, 281-485-0844, killenssteakhouse.com

Pastry chef Johnny Wesley, who joined Killen’s less than a year ago, is shaking things up on the pastry front down in Pearland. While Killen’s family-recipe bread pudding and other classic favorites, like their carrot cake, will always be on the menu, Wesley exercises creative freedom through daily specials and chef’s tasting menus, turning out delicious desserts like the dark chocolate custard with raspberry puree, coffee cream and crispy chocolate-covered cornflakes I tasted at a recent wine dinner [photo at left].

Very recently, he’s introduced table-side liquid nitrogen service with specials like his “dragon’s breath popcorn,” wherein popcorn is freeze-dried at the table and so cold that anyone who tries it immediately starts to breathe out “smoke.” Wesley’s nitro root beer floats are just as entertaining, when he’ll bring shot glasses to the table and make vanilla ice cream on the spot. The Dippin’ Dots-style vanilla ice cream is then topped with root beer for some head-turning, cold smoky fun.

LE MISTRAL, 1400 Eldridge Pkwy. at Briar Forest, 832-379-8322, lemistralhouston.com

While Le Mistral will always offer popular French standards like chocolate soufflé and tarte tatin, the menu is taking on a more playful edge, aided by pastry chef Marcos Sacalxot’s signature sugar sculptures – thin wisps of golden caramelized sugar shaped to look like a bullseye or spring – that are used to adorn everything from the chef’s tasting sampler to sorbet offerings and daily specials.

You won’t have to go to Paris’ famous Berthillon to find house-made sorbet flavors like pear, apricot, coconut, lemon or whatever is in season. Le Mistral’s brand-new ice cream machine by Italian maker Carpigiani churns out up to 3.8 gallons of ice cream or sorbet in 14 minutes. And if French macarons are your passion, feast your eyes on the colorful assortment of macarons housed in a chocolate cage [photo at left]. Served with house-made hazelnut ice cream, it’s nothing short of to-die-for.

Dessert doesn’t have to end at the table either. Walk a few steps across the separating hallway, and you’ll find a full bakery and patisserie at sister property Foody’s, where pastry chef Vincent Arene, who came to Houston straight from France, is doing traditional patisserie like you’d find in Paris shops – everything from traditional éclair to millefeuille (a puff pastry construction), tarte aux fraises (strawberry tart) to the delicate St. Honoré. It’s a definite “Oui” for me. 

OXHEART, 1302 Nance at Richey, 832-830-8592, oxhearthouston.com

Karen Man, one of the chef/owners of Oxheart, is classically trained, and when I say classically, I’m talking Thomas Keller’s Michelin-starred French Laundry, where she did a three-month externship in pastry, and Bouchon, where she learned about bread, along with a whole list of experiences in Europe. If you’re expecting French Laundry-type pastry, however, think again.

“The menu is driven by what’s locally available and fresh,” she says. Which means that if her dessert has beets in it, and she runs out of beets, she has to try making something else. Because Oxheart is a tasting-menu-only concept, there’s also the challenge of meeting guests’ dietary restrictions. People may be allergic to dairy, or gluten, or nuts, and if her dessert offering of the day doesn’t meet those restrictions, she makes something else especially for the customer, like a hazelnut dacquois with beet gelée and chocolate mousse. Her daily desserts exhibit her love of simple, clean flavors, like a recent coffee-roasted sunchoke semifreddo served with a buckwheat tarragon crumble, which she described as “simple and earthy.”

RAINBOW LODGE, 2011 Ella Blvd. at E. TC Jester, 713-861-8666, rainbow-lodge.com

Not long after young chef de cuisine Mario Valdez took over the reins in the kitchen, he hired two pastry chefs to re-energize the somewhat staid dessert menu. Under his guidance, Christine Au and Alexandrea Earle are creating desserts that still manage to maintain Rainbow Lodge’s traditional and rustic feel, with a more modern edge.

“The idea is to take something comfortable and change it up with unexpected elements,” says Valdez. Now, when you order lemon pie, it comes out beautifully presented in a glass canning jar, for example [photo above]. In it is a delicious mix of rosemary salted shortbread, lemon curd and lemon whip cream, which is topped with toasted meringue and an orange almond tuile. Instead of chocolate cheesecake, you get chocolate cream cheese torte, made with rich nibs-studded dark chocolate, espresso anglaise, brownie “soil” and mint chocolate powder, all garnished with white chocolate and cayenne cookie. Weekly dessert specials, which focus on seasonal items, become creations like the visually stunning deconstructed strawberry shortcake with lavender macerated strawberries, which is not only pretty to look at but delicious, too.

TRINITI, 2815 S. Shepherd at W. Alabama, 713-527-9090, trinitirestaurant.com

The ambitious pastry program at Triniti, which includes pastry, chocolate and mignardise (tiny bite-sized desserts served at the end of the meal), is overseen by chef de cuisine Jose Hernandez, whose specialty is Viennese pastry. The program is set to change completely every quarter, so if you haven’t had a chance to sample the deconstructed strawberry cheesecake [photo below] on the current menu, this means that you have approximately two more weeks to do it. Scintillating in every way, from how it’s plated to how it smells, the overall mouthfeel is one of smooth cheesecake against a biscuit crumble, with the firm fleshiness of fresh strawberry underscored by an initially crisp strawberry “glass” that eventually melts on the tongue. Trust me when I say that it’s utterly divine.

The well-rounded program accommodates those who require gluten-free options, with choices like coconut panna cotta with mango or chocolate gel cake with caramelized popcorn that make wheat products a distant memory. Hand-made chocolates can be ordered to savor in the restaurant or to-go, with flavors like milk chocolate caramel with jasmine or white chocolate with apricot and Latour cheese. The macarons are also excellent, with unusual flavor combinations like gianduja and mango, coconut and strawberry, or pistachio and passionfruit. One of the few restaurants to offer a mignardise, their molecular mango ball, similar to something you’d find at a Jose Andres restaurant, bursts with a gush of silky flavor when you put it in you mouth. Diners who opt for the tasting menu will even get a small box of handmade chocolates to enjoy at home.To top that off, “Every dinner guest gets presented with a hand-made madeleine pastry before they go home,” says Hernandez.

UCHI HOUSTON, 904 Westheimer at Montrose, 713-522-4808, uchirestaurants.com/houston

A couple of years ago, I visited the original Uchi in Austin and tasted a dessert that was so amazing, I never forgot it. Created by then-pastry chef Philip Speer for the Iron Chef competition, the dessert was a sake crème caramel with ginger consomme and brown butter sorbet. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

Though they haven’t brought the brown butter concoction to Houston, there are at least two Speer dessert creations that hail from its Austin predecessor. One is the peanut butter semifreddo with apple miso sorbet, which comes out of the kitchen looking like a mini modern food sculpture with its topping of lattice-work crispy somethings.

Speer’s first in command at Uchiko, pastry chef Monica Glen, currently heads up the cutting-edge pastry program at Uchi Houston, turning out wonderful creations like the Cantaloupe Okashi [photo above], a special menu item centered around an elderflower cordial. Available through the melon season and served in a rustic-looking cast iron bowl, the fragrant and refreshing dessert is the current bestseller. It may appear simple upon presentation, but make no mistake, the house-made cantaloupe sherbet topped with frozen buttermilk sabayon, frozen elderflower granita and elderflower and Riesling foam is a knockout.

Lemon pie jar photo at Rainbow Lodge by Mario Valdez
Macaron basket photo at Le Mistral by David Denis
All other photos by Mai Pham