If Gopnik had expanded by X100 the part of his essay where he discussed the different desserts his mother the scientist made every night when he was a kid, and contracted by a like amount the endless paragraphs devoted to his pilgrimage to the remote and inaccessible Spanish coast to visit the guru of modern desserts ensconced in his restaurant/institute/ashram, I feel that I might've actually come to understand something about dessert that was somehow not conveyed to me by being invited to contemplate the the empty space in the iconic modern restaurant where dessert might have been found sitting 25 years ago.

Had the same reaction, jamjam! The part where he segues from his mother's desserts, lightning-quick, to the modern restaurant dessert made me have to stop and re-read, because he gave the past such short shrift. It's Adam Gopnik. He's always the almost there writer for me. Almost a significant intellectual. Almost a good cultural critic. Almost funny. Almost warmly human. Never quite gets there, for me.

I did get something from this piece, though - he drew out the idea that dessert is the only part of the meal not really encumbered by expectation, the need to deliver something serious: nutrition, weight, technique. The part that can be whimsical, fanciful, strange, impressionistic, experimental, and nonserious. I liked that.

DEspite its flaws, this ranks for me as one of Gopnik's two pieces really worth reading. The other one was his teasing out of the colonialist influences on the Babar story. Both good pieces. Everything else he writes, I read, finish, and then think "But --- that's nowhere near enough."