At an underground bar in downtown Aspen, a “Salt and Sugar” experience takes an unusual approach to dessert, forgoing the tradition of sweet and creamy confections in favor of something more savory — like a caviar popsicle.
“I just find it fascinating, just to step away from that conventional thinking of, ‘How is a dessert supposed to be?” said Ben Kunert, the pastry chef at the Hotel Jerome who created the experience for the Bad Harriet speakeasy.
Kunert’s seven-course tasting menu at Bad Harriet includes dishes like “salad” (a combination of endive creme, stinging nettle sorbet and grapefruit) and “sushi” (made with miso ice cream and a nori gel).
This is the final weekend of the “Salt and Sugar” experience, with reservations available through Saturday. Kunert said some of the items — like a “forage” dessert with porcini mushroom ice cream and tree sap granita — might be reimagined for the menu at Prospect, the Hotel Jerome’s fine-dining restaurant.
Arts and culture reporter Kaya Williams produced this audio postcard with the chef; you can read an edited transcript below and hear the audio version above, using the “Listen” button at the top of this story.
Ben Kunert: The first reaction is going to be a little bit of irritation.
The thing is, and this is what I tell the guests when they arrive, is they should have an open mind about it right? What we're trying to create is something that people really haven't experienced in this way before. Where we showcase what we can actually do with pastry, right? Or with desserts, right?
We want to step away from that, you know, conventional brownie, cookie, cheesecake. And we want to show people something that is completely new. Where it all makes sense, right? But it's just, it weirds you out a little bit.
Obviously, the caviar popsicle, which we serve right in the beginning, as a little greeting, if you may, … people are fascinated about the whole combination of sweet and salty, where they say, ‘How does that even work?’ But traditionally, the combination of, for instance, white chocolate and caviar has been around forever.
In this case, we don't really use chocolate, we make an ice cream out of creme fraiche. In the savory world, that's completely normal. But so why can't we just use it in the pastry world?
And it works really well. And people are slightly irritated when they eat it. They say, ‘Well, hang on, you know, this is weird. Why are we serving caviar in a dessert or why are we making desserts out of mushrooms?’ Right?
But this is what we're trying to provoke, right? We're trying to provoke conversation. Like, ‘Hey, wow, this is really interesting, you know. It might not be everybody's favorite dish they've ever had. But it's something to think about, right? Why do we always categorize dessert as, you know, your high calorie, high fat, high sugar component, where there's so much more to it right?
Believe it or not, I used to be like, totally against any sort of pastries, or sweets, I didn't eat a lot of sugar. It just wasn't my thing. I studied to become a savory chef, that was my aspiration, I always wanted to just work in the kitchen and, you know, fry steaks all day.
But as I was developing my skills, as a chef, I just really noticed that, you know, especially in the pastry department, there's so much that you can do; you can really, you know, let your creativity loose and just, really play around, whereas on the savory side, everything is a little bit more straightforward, right? There's certain procedures that you do — not just obviously frying steak, but it's just, it's a whole lot more structured than it is in pastry where you can be a little bit more playful.
A second dish that I would say causes a lot of a lot of discussion is the barbecue desert, where we make a baked potato ice cream with tomato chutney.
Tomatoes in desserts is sometimes very, very tricky because of the acidity that it has. But in this case, it really works. Because again, in the savory world, you have your potato, we infuse that ice cream with a little bit of bacon. And you have your sour cream, which is the base of ice cream. And then you have your tomatoes. These are all components that you would have at a traditional barbecue.
People are like ‘Okay, so I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna have a dessert-inspired menu. I'm gonna get your sweet after sweet after sweet.’
But we really structured it as an actual savory menu, but with those pastry elements, and people — you definitely hear with the feedback that you get from the people or from the guests that they really start thinking about it.
It’s like, ‘Wow, this is really, really amazing. Like, this is something that I've never had before.’ And that's what we want to achieve.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
