Trend Watch: Chocolate Mousse

I've come to realize that cupcakes are forever. My awesome colleague Kate Heddings recently found new ones to love from Citarella, and now there's word of a cupcake truck. Personally, though, I'm finding comfort in the chocolate mousse I’m seeing all over the place at new New York restaurants, notable for the fun and varied toppings. At Monkey Bar, the chocolate mousse was the best thing I ate, topped with a large wafer of peanut crunch. Three-star Minetta Tavern serves their chocolate mousse as a bombe coated with chocolate cake crumbs, while over at Bar Artisanal, it’s accented with both hazelnut crunch and coffee granita. And at Kefi, Michael Psilakis is garnishing his chocolate mousse with crumbled halvah, which I think is so smart. The New York Times agrees with me: Frank Bruni called the Kefi dessert “a treat much like, but more novel than, the combination of chocolate and peanut butter.” The chocolate mousse trend has even hit L.A.—at the amazing Patisserie at SLS (above), José Andrés likes chocolate mousse so much, he’s offering two kinds: hot chocolate mousse with salty hazelnut praline, and a trio of choc mousses (milk, white and dark) with Pop Rocks.