• Gordon Ramsay at the London

  151 W. 54th St; 212-468-8888

  Superstar chef Alain Ducasse started the trolley craze when he opened at the Essex House a few years back with his Champagne and friandise carts. Now his fellow New York interloper, the Scottish chef and Hell’s Kitchen star Gordon Ramsay, has rolled out his own impressive piece of four-wheeled haute cuisine at his new restaurant in the London NYC Hotel: a three-tiered silver-and-dark-wood bonbon trolley practically buckling under the weight of every imaginable kind of sweet. Stocked by the talented pastry chef Alistair Wise, Ramsay’s trolley appears tableside when coffee, tea, or an infusion is served. Seven Waterford-crystal cookie jars are set on the lower level with an assortment of old favorites: caramel popcorn, cotton candy, vanilla and lime marshmallows, crunchy peanut brittle, chocolate and anise macaroons, and the like. The second tier is a chocoholic’s fever dream, featuring handmade molded dark chocolates in conical and cylindrical shapes filled with a selection of creamy ganaches (for good measure, miniature apricot and almond puff-pastry tarts are thrown in). The crowning-glory top tier is a large silver bowl overflowing with a selection of wrapped salted caramels, nougats, and pâté de fruit candies. Why bother with dessert? For a mere $8, you get coffee and what may be the best bargain in all of sweetdom.

From the 2007 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine