I love bananas more than anyone else I know. And seeing them on restaurant menus all over the country makes me endlessly happy. It's a polarizing fruit, often too rich and too creamy to be truly inviting. Nine times out of ten, I just eat my slightly underripe bananas on-the-go: a sweet, utilitarian and self-contained breakfast on my way out the door in the morning. Occasionally I'll opt for banana pancakes or top French toast with them. But that's where bananas stay, relegated to breakfast.
We forget that the US has a long legacy of iconic banana desserts, from banana cream pies, which are the ultimate American diner dessert, to Brennan's famous New Orleans bananas Foster, and every 1950s kids' fantasy, the banana split. So we have to say we're thankful that they're in fashion, riding the coattails of 2014's throwback dessert wave, and converting people into believers. Banana desserts are back, and we're into it.
There are restaurants putting subtle twists on the classics. Kansas City's Rye serves a heavenly and astoundingly light banana cream pie and Asheville's Nightbell presents its banana split with banana ice cream, a dark chocolate waffle cone, pineapple curd, strawberry rocks, and a maraschino cherry sauce. There was a take on a famous Southern icon, banana pudding, at Swift's Attic in Austin, which called its dessert "Bitch Puddin'," a creamy banana pudding made with malted chocolate stout, hazelnut beer brittle, and banana bubbles. Roast in Detroit is trying its hand at at a "Baby Elvis," a peanut butter banana custard with chocolate banana peanut butter chunk and Fuel Cafe in Denver makes a Banoffee pie with animal cracker pretzel crust, dulce de leche, bananas, whipped cream, chocolate shavings, and bruleed banana to boot.
Others are adding banana components where they never belonged before, for example in a millefeuille at Seattle's Canlis accompanied by milk chocolate, caramel, and peanut butter; and alongside a sticky toffee bon bon with crispy dark chocolate that features banana rum flambé at Lafayette in New York. Some are elevating bananas, opting for refinement and delicate desserts, like the caramelized banana cream "pie" at Primo in Maine. At another Austin restaurant, Launderette, Laura Sawicki incorporates bananas into the Hazelnut Layer Cake to accompany dulcey coffee mousse, praline, and sour cream ice cream.
Dessert trends come and go faster than the seasons, so the next time you see banana in a dessert on the menu, it might be worth saving some room in that second dessert stomach for it. Or else you could just pull up a stool at a diner counter and check out the banana cream pies chilling in the fridge. We know for sure that the one at Kansas City's Town Topic is pretty bananas.