Jose Coto’s 188 Cuchifritos is a palace of pork, a lunch counter that purveys a tail-to-snout array of succulent products like soft ears, meaty stomach, bouncy morcilla, garlicky pernil, and golden chicharrones. The appropriate foil for all these fatty, salty wonders is a drinkable Dominican dessert: the regal morir soñando. Staffers pulverize fresh oranges into juice, then mix the pulpy beverage over ice with a vanilla-laced condensed milk. The sugary, creamsicle-like creation cleanses your palate of all the rampant salts and jolts your body out of a pork-induced torpor.

Folks might come to JJ Johnson’s Fieldtrip for the stellar gumbo or soft beef brisket, but a meal here wouldn’t be complete without one of the better new entries in the city’s deeply competitive soft serve category. The kitchen blends rice milk, raspberries, and hibiscus into a cool, purple-hued treat ($4.50). It doesn’t pack the lusciousness of a milkier gelato, but that’s not the point here; the point is to lower your core temperature with fruit and sugar — and without any dairy. The soft serve here is vegan, and it’s light enough to inhale.

In the streets of Jakarta and Surabaya, the dessert known as martabak manis is ubiquitous, griddled-to-order in all sorts of sweet and savory flavors. The Indonesian pancakes are considerably harder to find in the five boroughs, but Astoria’s Papa Don is home to more than a dozen varieties, done up with condensed milk, coconut flakes, coffee, and ube. The cakes come in individual servings — two of any flavor for $7 — or family-style, sliced into 14 pieces, each with a different topping ($18). Everything is made to order, so be sure to call ahead.  

Joe Allen’s is famous as a post-theater hangout, a place for Broadway spectators and working actors to grab an ice cold martini and a juicy, medium-rare hamburger in a packed room. But it also serves an unexpectedly excellent dessert: a fat slice of banana cream pie ($12), a layer of slow cooked tropical fruit underneath layers of custard and schlag. It is both rich and cooling, making it the perfect foil for another martini.

This deceiving dessert may look like an average halved avocado, but it's actually a key lime pie parfait set on top of citrus-y ice and a smear of eucalyptus yogurt. The $19 parfait is made in an avocado-shaped mold and spray-painted to resemble the ombre of a real avocado. According to Eater critic Ryan Sutton, it’s “a five-year-old’s dream of what an avocado might taste like, before actually biting into one and realizing it’s oily, fatty, and overrated. The Stupak avocado is pastry as escapism. And it’s delicious."

Chefs Ignacio Mattos and Maxime Pradié — with the help of baker Louis Volle — have given New Yorkers a proper reason to hang out around Rockefeller Center for reasons relating to charcuterie, pastries, anchovies, and desserts. The flauta al cioccolato, a pain au chocolat that looks more like a golden candy bar than traditional viennoiserie — it’s nearly as crunchy as a Butterfinger — is your go-to option when taking out. Still, sit-down patrons would be well served to try the estimable budino di riso ($12). The kitchen cooks up a rice pudding that’s as rich and al dente as good risotto; it sits atop a layer of red wine-poached grapes for an added hint of sugar and acid.

Danielle Boulud’s Midtown fine dining palace is an expensive restaurant, with prix-fixe option at $125 and tasting menus at $155 (vegetables) and $195 (seafood). But here’s a little trick: diners can order a la carte at the bar, which boasts some of the restaurant’s best views of the nearby Chrysler Building. So consider swinging by the lounge just for dessert, particularly the noisette. Chefs pair milk chocolate crémeux and hazlenut nougatine with praline croustillant for a silky, crunchy, Ferrero Rocher-like affair.

Blessed with a dessert menu by famed pastry chef Claudia Fleming, Ci Siamo is an easy bright spot in the Hudson Yards-adjacent Manhattan West complex. Of particular note is the $12 lemon torta, a tangy sliver of creamy lemon filling on top of a paper-thin crust. Each bite is tart and buttery, and alongside it all is a faultless sidecar: torched meringue shaped into a tiny bowl and filled with olive oil.

The husk meringue is one of the most written-about (and Instagrammed) dishes on the menu at Enrique Olvera’s groundbreaking Mexican restaurant in Flatiron. The slightly savory corn mousse is topped with a sugary husk meringue that gives the dessert a perfect balance of flavors and textures.

Olive oil gelato lovers will delight in Don Angie’s fior di latte mochi ($8). The dessert comes to the table at this West Village Italian-American restaurant looking like a ball of mozzarella cheese, when in fact it’s mochi that’s stretched around milky fior di latte gelato then topped with olive oil and sea salt. This dessert is all about stretchy and chewy textures, coupled with the subtle flavors of olive oil and high-quality cream.

Patricia Howard and Ed Szymanski’s British seafood spot specializes in British desserts. Think: vanilla posset with passion fruit and meringue or a classic sticky toffee pudding. In the summer, lucky diners might encounter an outstanding cherry tart, but right now, Szymanski offers a bit of bright winter citrus. Enter the yuzu tart, a puckery and aromatic curd garnished with a bit of zest and a generous dollop of whipped cream (around $12). Pair it with one of the venue’s many mezcals under $20.

Ann Redding and Matt Danzer attracted a cult following at Uncle Boons for their indulgent coconut sundae, and while their flagship venue closed during the pandemic, the team has brought back the dessert at Thai Diner, loading it up with coconut caramel, palm sugar whipped cream, and candied peanuts. It’s still a heck of a dessert, but consider trying out some of Thai Diner’s newer creations. Case in point: the banana rum pudding, a tri-level parfait that involves a bottom layer of pudding, a whipped cream middle, and a lotus-root shaped sesame tuile crown on top ($9). It’s a rich study in the aromas of deeply flavorful, slowly-cooked bananas.

Chef and partner Chintan Pandya and restaurateur Roni Mazumdar have themselves a fantastic fireball of a regional Indian restaurant. The precisely calibrated dishes like goat’s neck biriyani and grilled goat belly will light the palate ablaze. It’s the type of cooking that begs for an icy finish. If only. The kitchen instead whips up a chhena poda baked cheese dessert — renowned in India’s Eastern Odisha state — that packs a caramelized exterior, a cake-like interior, and an astringent, matcha-like tang (from a banana leaf wrap). Dhamaka serves it so hot it singes your tongue, just like the rest of the exhilarating fare here.

Kyo Pang’s Chinatown stunner remains a perfect place to spend a lazy afternoon or evening, sipping black coffee with ghee butter and sampling the Malaysian sweets. There’s really no wrong choice here, from the butter toast with fragrant pandan coconut jam to the hand-rolled muah chee, but there’s something truly special about the perfumed pulut inti ($3.75). Pang executes the classic masterfully, topping firm, sticky morning glory rice with a dense crown of grated coconut sugar.

Chef Gerardo Alcaraz serves some serious al pastor tacos at this intimate Williamsburg Mexican spot, but be sure to ask about the desserts, including the elegant buñuelo. Alcaraz fries the dough until it takes on a shatteringly crisp texture, then slathers it all with a goat’s milk cajeta mousse, imparting every bite with the flavor of cream and goat’s milk caramel. Pair with mezcal.

Visually, the sundaes at FiDi restaurant Crown Shy are a far cry from treats of American childhood. Pastry chef Renata Ameni makes painstakingly composed sundaes ($16) where toppings like toasted marshmallow come out with a smooth, artful browning. The flavors, though, call upon the best of playful nostalgia. The satsuma orange ice cream in particular recalls summertime orange creamsicles from a truck, but with a far broader range of textures, courtesy of a meringue, creamy ice cream, and chewy, crunchy honeycomb candy.

All of Petee’s pies are excellent, but one of the cafe’s most exceptional options is the toasted almond chess pie ($7.50 per slice). A burnished top tiled with sliced almonds gives way to a gooey interior and — only with the black bottom version — a layer of dark chocolate ganache. Get it (or any pie) with a generous dollop of the shop’s maple whipped cream. There’s another location on the Lower East Side, too.

This underwater-themed cocktail bar above Gage & Tollner has one the city’s more extensive drink lists. The food menu, by contrast, is just a few items long, but that’s fine with us when there’s a knockout miso butterscotch pudding to be had. Pastry chef Caroline Schiff makes a dessert that’s not too sweet, while keeping the presentation decadent: It’s topped with whipped cream and coconut flakes in a sundae glass. We won’t blame you if you end up ordering dessert before dinner, while waiting for a table downstairs.

At Miss Ada in Fort Greene, chef Tomer Blechman uses Middle Eastern flavors throughout the ever-changing menu — including at dessert, where chocolate babka and kanafeh could be among the offerings. The light and pillowy labne mousse is a particular star. Sometimes it’s finished with a fruity granita; currently it’s topped with candied pecans and silan date syrup. It’s what a classic froyo wants to be when it grows up: slightly tart and with the airy texture that must be what biting into a cloud feels like.

Rawia Bishara’s Palestinian restaurant in Bay Ridge offers a variety of fine Middle Eastern sweets, including piney sahlab custard, dense semolina-coconut harissa cake, and anise-y macaroni cookies. But if you’re here for dessert, chances are, you’re here for the knafeh, a giant slab of baked sweet cheese covered in filo and soaked in aromatic orange flower water. Half the fun is watching a server slice it tableside and stretch out the cheese like a pizzaiolo. A small order ($16) feeds two to three people; a large order ($20) feeds four to six.