There is arguably no better way to end a meal than with a sticky toffee pudding. The soft and tender sponge cake, made from a batter with softened dates, arrives hot and drowned in a rich, glossy toffee sauce. It is often crowned with a scoop of ice cream for a glorious interplay of temperatures. It’s not difficult to see why it’s one of Britain’s favorite desserts. And luckily for Angelenos, you can now find great sticky toffee pudding on the menu at several restaurants across the city.
The rise of sticky toffee pudding makes a lot of sense. There is a growing interest in British cooking in Los Angeles recently — particularly among restaurants that reinterpret dishes through a Californian lens, such as Tomat and Wilde’s. The dessert’s enthusiastic use of dates also makes it a very Southern Californian dessert, given the abundance of date trees that grow in the region.
Chef Brian Bornemann, who added sticky toffee pudding to the dessert menu at his new pasta-focused restaurant Bar Fortuna in Santa Monica, says the dessert’s recent surge in popularity is also likely due to the fact that it is not overly complicated to make. “In a world where most restaurants in Los Angeles cannot afford pastry chefs anymore, this is a dessert that is easy to execute with a small margin of error.”
Across Los Angeles, restaurants of all kinds are putting their own spin on the dessert. Some are giving it a cultural reinterpretation: a Persian restaurant in Century City adds candied orange and walnuts, while a West African-inspired spot in Inglewood makes a version with both dates and plantains. Some chefs are using unexpected ingredients like fish sauce or aged vanilla jaggery powder, while others are serving more traditional takes. There has never been a better time to be a sticky toffee pudding-lover in Los Angeles. Here are 11 versions worth ending your meal with: