Butterscotch Budino

 Butterscotch Budino
The Loft (at Latitude Forty Seven Seven),  $5

The Loft's butterscotch budino (Italian for "pudding") is a rich custard made in-house with generous amounts of butter and brown sugar, served with caramel sauce, whipped cream, and a sprinkle of fleur de sel. 

The Loft (at Latitude Forty Seven Seven)
18779 Front St
Poulsbo, WA
360/625-0224

Ch� chu?i

Ch� chu?i
Tan Tan, $2

Strip malls and pudding have one great quality in common: they both remind me not to judge solely on appearances. In a nondescript strip mall in Vancouver, WA you'll find Tan Tan, a family-run restaurant serving fresh Vietnamese food and desserts so palpably homemade you could imagine a mom whipping them up to welcome her kids back from a hard day at kindergarten.

Chilling in a glass case by the door, the desserts mostly fall into the "ch�" category of soupy or pudding-like Vietnamese sweets. On any given day there might be com ru?u (rice balls in sweet rice wine), bukopandan (a sweet tofu tinted green pandanus leaf), Vietnamese yogurt, ch� b?p (sweet corn, sticky rice, and coconut milk), or ch� d?u tr?ng (black eyed peas, sticky rice, and coconut milk). All the blobs, lumps, and cloudy liquids are prepacked into clear plastic cups.

Slightly greyish and pocked with dark splotches, ch� chu?i may not be much to look at, but like all great puddings it offers an experience all the more transcendent for being unexpected. Sweet-tart slices of fresh banana and succulent spheres of tapioca swim in thick, silky, sweetened coconut milk. Tan Tan even provides a garnish of crushed, roasted peanuts, thoughtfully packaged in a tiny ziploc bag so that they stay fresh and crisp until the moment comes to provide the perfect counterpoint to all that unctuous richness.

Tan Tan
Ste A3316 SE 123rd Ave
Vancouver, WA
360/892-3400

Harrah's Casino Desserts

Creme Caramel (top)
Chocolate Cream Pie (bottom)
Harrah's Casino, $13 buffet

There's one sure bet at Harrah's Casino: if you ante up for the buffet, you won't want to eat again until spring.

From its clashing carpets to its flashing lights, the casino itself is meticulously designed to keep even the calmest eye from settling anywhere for long, giving every visitor decorator-induced ADHD. The buffet plays along, with more than a dozen stations offering everything you might hunger for, until your plate is piled so high you can't remember what's underneath and eating becomes an archaeological excavation of your basest impulses.

After grits, mashed potatoes, mac 'n' cheese, and well over a pound of steamed asparagus I wandered over to see how much trouble I could get into at the wraparound dessert counter: plenty. Not the best creme caramel or chocolate cream pie I've ever had, sure, but the best I've had from a buffet, and they did a great job of padding out the rough edges left by my previous courses.

Tofu Pudding

Tofu Pudding
Northwest Tofu Inc.

Seattle's Northwest Tofu makes and sells fresh tofu in a huge range of formats, including jugs of milk, silky blocks, sheets of wrinkled tofu skin, gnarled fried cubes, a salty "Chinese donut", and tubs of soft-set pudding--either plain or lightly sweetened. The pudding is creamy and smooth, but in a much lighter and more refreshing way than dairy-based puddings. The flavor is slightly sweet and slightly beany, but like all plain tofu, tofu pudding is able to soak up other flavors like a new sponge (personally, I think of tofu as "blank" rather than "bland"). Bowl by bowl I enjoyed stirring in new flavorings, with matcha, vanilla, and instant coffee being my favorites so far (did I mention it's a large tub?).

Northwest Tofu Inc.
1913 S Jackson St
Seattle, WA
206/328-8320