Desserts Get Savory With Foie Gras

You're at a nice restaurant. The meal ends. The server hands you a dessert menu. Something catches your eye — dessert with foie gras. It might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of dessert, but chefs nationwide are making another case.

In Atlanta, at 4th & Swift, Pastry Chef Chrysta Umberger has created a dessert incorporating classic Southern comfort food with French techniques. The dish, Duck N' Donuts, starts with sugared doughnuts (made in-house daily) topped with homemade foie gras ice cream and caramelized Granny Smith apple slices.

Flip Burger Boutique, also in Atlanta, serves foie gras milkshakes. Top Chef contestant, Richard Blais, Flip's chef and owner, serves other intriguing milkshakes. Take, for example, pistachio and white truffle, and Nutella with burnt marshmallow. 

Speaking of foie gras ice cream, Humphry Slocombe in San Francisco has this decadent flavor in their rotation. Slocombe is known for featuring inventive, and often, peculiar ice creams (think fume, strawberry black olive, and Pom coconut ale).

In Portland, another foie gras ice cream comes from Le Pigeon, where they fill profiteroles with it, topped with caramel and chocolate sauce. They've also served foie gras-jelly donuts. 

When Top Chef winner, Michael Voltaggio, and his brother, Bryan (that season's runner-up), were asked to cook dinner at the Beard House last year, they started the meal with foie gras jelly donuts. 

And in Hawaii, Michel's at the Colony Surf Hotel in Waikiki offers a dessert called Strawberries Foie Gras Forever. It includes fresh strawberries flambéed with brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, Cognac, and foie gras over ice cream.

The Daily Byte is a regular column dedicated to covering interesting food news and trends across the country. Click here for the previous The Daily Byte.