D Bar
3930 Fifth Ave. (Hillcrest)
619-299-3227
Dinner prices: Starters, $6 to $12; entrees, $11 to $25; desserts, $8 to $15

By Frank Sabatini Jr. | Restaurant Review

The holiday sweets I encountered last month sucked. A tin of homemade cookies that my aunt sent were reduced to crumbs in the mailing process. A box of cocoa-dusted truffles I purchased for a party tasted like cheap fudge. And the apple pie our hosts served after Christmas dinner was store-bought.

To make up for lost sugar, I headed to D Bar with a sweet-toothed companion in tow. Yes, the “D” stands for “desserts,” but it also signifies “drinking” from a full liquor inventory and “dining” from a menu of savories that live up to the magnificent confections conceived by acclaimed pastry wizard Keegan Gerhard and his wife, Lisa Bailey, also an accomplished pastry chef.

By order of anyone who has dined at D Bar since it opened last year, save room for dessert, specifically the “cake and shake,” which features a wedge of three-layer chocolate cake made with sour cream and Madagascar chocolate frosting. The sour cream, says Keegan, tenderizes the crumb. Blatantly so, its melt-in-your-mouth texture bewitches upon first bite.

Gerhard, who also emcees the “Food Network Challenge” TV shows, was twice named one of the top 10 pastry chefs by Chocolatier Magazine. His use of rich and silky chocolate continues across the dessert menu in “faux foster banana imposter” involving chocolate cremeux piped between two Belgian waffles that are topped with the caramelized fruit. A seat at the spacious dessert bar (highly recommended) put us in direct eyeshot of the pastry team assembling the creation practically non-stop, with an occasional molten chocolate cake being yanked from the oven.

Savories are cooked in a concealed kitchen at the rear of the D Bar’s lofty interior, which also features a booze bar and table seating throughout the middle area. But no matter where you sit, full wait service for the entire menu is provided.

Visiting for dinner, we began with a couple of appetizers that differed dramatically in terms of weight and refinement. The “avos avos avos” involved three treatments of avocado on the same plate: as fondue with goat cheese; raw and dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper; and a fried wedge encased in crispy filo strands. Exquisite.

More substantial was a deep bowl of “crue fries” that likely resembled in calories those heaping portions of carne asada fries I’ve devoured after late-night bar crawls. These are deliciously flooded with cheese sauce, shaved Jack and cheddar, bacon and Ranch dressing. There is also garlic, Parmesan and chives at work. Your chances of accommodating dessert diminish greatly if you consume the fries solo.

From the entrée section, my companion ordered short ribs that were braised in Coca Cola and served de-boned over buttery mushrooms and grits spiked with mascarpone cheese. The dish appealed to his Midwest roots. Unlike similar beef recipes I’ve tried using cola; the caramel flavoring wasn’t lost here. The residual sugar from the soda found a welcome host in the tender meat, titillating without tasting overly sweet.

The “Southern fried Belgian” is a newfangled version of chicken and waffles, constructed into manageable sandwich form. Honey mustard replaces the customary maple syrup while a dash of cheese goes into the waffles. Tradition is upheld, however, with superlative buttermilk batter encasing the chicken. Needless to say, half of the sandwich came home with me and proved equally filling the next day.

Other entrees that appear worth a re-visit include spice-rubbed Porterhouse pork, spaghetti with Fontina-stuffed Kobe meatballs and scallops with risotto that is speckled with cocoa nibs.

In addition to our “cake and shake,” we encroached on a fruity, non-chocolate dessert called “spring break ’98,” inspired by a trip to Jamaica Gerhard made in his college days. Pineapple and rum naturally factored in, resulting in a thick ring of the fruit roasted in the liquor and complimented greatly by ginger-macadamia crumble and homemade coconut ice cream. It was our fast pass to the tropics on a painfully chilly night.

With a glass of bubbly Moscato d’Asti we kept parked alongside (or a tiramisu martini or chai-infused whiskey if you will), D Bar is a one-stop shop for culinary indulgence. Hang around the dessert bar long enough and you’ll also learn a few valuable tricks pertaining to the art of pastry.