Perfect pudding

The Brentwood

Far and away the most popular sweet at this sexy, dimly lighted American spot is the chocolate bread pudding. Brioche is combined with chocolate custard, baked, then cooled. Slices of the moist pudding are blanketed in homemade bittersweet hot fudge and slipped back into the oven to order. The result is over the top, in the best sense, even without the cool whipped cream.

* Bread pudding, $8. 148 S. Barrington Ave., Brentwood, (310) 476-3511

Baby Blues Bar-B-Q

Into fancy desserts? The banana pudding served good and chilled at this terrific barbecue joint is anything but. Sliced ripe banana and Nilla Wafers (yep, straight out of the box) are layered with vanilla pudding that is blended with heavy cream and sugar. Serious pastry chefs might balk but the dessert has legions of fans.

* Pudding, $5. 444 Lincoln Blvd., Venice, (310) 396-7675

Napa Valley Grille

Served warm with a scoop of tangy, homemade mascarpone sorbet, the sticky toffee pudding cake -- a combination of eggs, butter, flour, sugar, water and chopped pitted dates -- is pure comfort. But it’s the toffee sauce that really makes it. What’s in the sauce? Butter, brown sugar and cream. “The three food groups,” jokes pastry chef John Smilanic.

* Sticky toffee pudding, $8.50. 1100 Glendon Ave., Westwood, (310) 824-3322

Zeke’s Smokehouse

Among the fab desserts at this barbecue spot (with a second location in West Hollywood) is a suave tapioca pudding. The chefs start with real tapioca pearls -- no instant stuff here -- and cook it with whole milk, sugar and vanilla. Beaten egg whites are gently folded in. The pudding is served very cold and topped with fresh whipped cream.

* Pudding, $4.95. 2209 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, (818) 957-7045

Blair’s

Pudding takes three forms here. There are cinnamon sugar-dusted doughnuts filled with vanilla pudding, a cranberry and rhubarb trifle layered with caramel pudding, and heavenly bread pudding made with brioche, lemon-vanilla custard and spiced butternut squash and topped with honey vanilla ice cream.

* Doughnuts, trifle or bread pudding, $9 each. 2903 Rowena Ave., Silver Lake, (323) 660-1882.

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-- Leslee Komaiko