Mixed Doubles

Am I sensing something here? I’m in the bar at Norman’s on Sunset, thinking cocktails, but staring at the dessert menu, and I feel a trend taking shape.

Maybe it’s because the right side of my brain is in charge. I’m taking it easy here, on bar time, lounging in what would pass for a comfy living room except for the semi-weird sculptures, granite counter and piles of expensive hooch.

Meanwhile, all I’m interested in is dessert, which raises a question that has nibbled at the back of my mind before: What do you drink with dessert?

The standard answer is sweet wines such as Ports or Sauternes. The trouble is, desserts have been getting more complicated. We’re not living in a cheesecake/tiramisu world anymore. Now you’re likely to look at a dessert plate with four or five elements on it. How could one wine go with all of them?

Take the dessert I’m favoring on this menu, the New World Banana Split. It’s a postmodern arrangement: bananas sauteed with caramel sauce and flamed with rum, with a scoop of macadamia ice cream in a frilled cup cunningly fashioned out of a paper-thin chocolate wafer. Glamorous swirls of raspberry and papaya share the plate.

Now, what vintage would “marry” with all that? Is there such a thing as a polygamist wine?

Something is coming back to me, hazy memories of a culinary contest on the “Top Chef” reality show. A Las Vegas chef pairing desserts with cocktails. Hmm. Cocktails always have several elements. For a compound dessert, a compound drink.

I clear my throat: “Barkeep, bring me a Dark and Stormy.” That’s a ginger beer with a generous float of dark rum, which looks like a menacing cloud leaking down from the ice cubes. A sardonic dash of lime juice tops it off.

The “split” and the cocktail work beautifully. The browned flavors of the rum match with the caramel; the lime and ginger get along beautifully with the tropical fruits. No wine would do as well. I’m sold on the idea of a well-chosen cocktail with dessert.

Am I right that people are making this connection, or is it just a Vegas thing? “It’s been a trend of late,” agrees Norman’s bartender/sommelier Peter Birmingham. “People are having cocktails with the fruit sorbets and fruit desserts. One thing we do a lot here is the Angeleno cocktail: pureed cherimoya and Thai guava mixed with Skyy melon vodka, orange bitters and ginger beer, then blended with ice. It gets sort of a sherbet-y texture. We serve that with fruits and sorbets, even with cake.”

Don’t tell me I’m wasting my time eating dessert in a bar, pally. I’m trend-spotting.