The Girl Who Ate Everything

INDESSERT!!!

You know that feeling you get when you're lost at sea for days, and you can feel your innards shriveling up as the life drains out of your malnourished body, and you've held out on killing your shipmate and eating him because he's one of your most loyal and trustworthy friends, but, hm, on second thought, he's looking pretty beefy and surely doesn't need all that thigh muscle? And just as you're about to go in for the kill with your bare, adrenaline-powered hands, you see a light in the distance. A beacon of hope that says, "Cannibalism, you'll just have to wait." You've found civilization. You're saved.

That's sort of how I felt when I first came across Indessert. Without the starvation and hopelessness and deranged lust for flesh, but with the rapturous excitement that great things I hadn't expected were coming my way, accompanied by internally screeching, "OMG OMG YAY!!!@#!@" repeatedly. I was just really happy Chinatown finally had a dessert shop. So happy that I've been to Indessert nine times since it opened in March (and two of those visits happened last week).

Indessert continued.

What's so great about Indessert? Let me count the ways:

• It's not another bakery, ice cream shop, or froyo shop (although I wouldn't mind another ice cream shop). They specialize in tong sui—Cantonese desserts like black sesame paste soup, red bean paste soup, sweet potato soup, mixed bean and taro soup, and other sweet soups made with coconut milk or ripe mango purée. They also do shaved ice, waffles, tofu pudding, and other Asian favorites. There are tong sui shops in Brooklyn, but none of them are as convenient for me to go to as Indessert because...
• It's a ten-minute walk from my office.
• They have ample seating in a comfortable, non-garish environment. You don't get much of that in Chinatown.
• They're open late—until 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until midnight on Friday and Saturday. That may not be notable in other food-heavy neighborhoods, but Chinatown is pretty dead after 10 p.m. and doesn't offer much in the ways of fun late night hang-out spots.