Desserts

The most decorated part of this kitchen

Kool Beanz has never been a restaurant where dessert is an afterthought bought in from a supplier. The pastry section is made fresh in-house daily, changes constantly like everything else, and has taken this small Tallahassee restaurant to a national James Beard semifinal.

Sylvia Gould arrived as a server about five months after the doors opened in 1996. When the pastry chef left, she asked for the job, having never worked in pastry. Keith Baxter, who has said he had been in the business forty years and never worked with a more gifted or creative pastry chef, gave it to her. In 2020 she was named one of twenty national semifinalists for Outstanding Pastry Chef, and Food Network invited her onto Best Baker in America.

Her work draws on her own background — born in Michigan to a Vietnamese mother and a German-American father, with a fine art degree from Florida State. The Vietnamese coffee baked Alaska, served with candied kumquats, a sesame tulip, blackberries and hibiscus and chocolate syrups, is the dish guests describe back to us most often.

Save room for dessert since these too are a far cry from your average key lime pie and chocolate cake selection. From a guest review

Recurring favourites

• Coconut cream layer cake — light, not too sweet, and enormous. Repeat orders on consecutive nights are documented.
• Vietnamese coffee baked Alaska — the signature, and the one that went to the James Beard judges.
• Baked Alaska in its other seasonal forms.
• Bruleed banana with pandan ice cream, coconut cake and brittle — a plate several guests have written out in full from memory.