One Great Plate: Classic Chocolate Birthday Cake at LEVANTeast

 

 

 

I WAS SUSPICIOUS from the very beginning. “Is it some sort of cake-flavored ice cream with a butter-cream foam emulsion thing?” I asked the friend who raved about the birthday cake at new Lower East Side eatery and lounge LEV- ANTeast. “No,” I was told. “It’s straightup birthday cake.” I was intrigued. Surely no birthday cake fits all; one person’s strawberry shortcake would be different from another’s Cookiepuss.

I asked chef Laurent Brunacci what his favorite birthday treat was, but he offered up no clues as to what I’d just ordered. “I like simple things,” he told me. “Ice creams, sorbets.” And what creative epiphany had led to listing birthday cake on the menu? “We have a lot of groups come in for birthday parties,” he said with a shrug. “We sell it by the slice ($8) or a whole cake, which serves about 6–8 people ($36).” It’s not only reasonable considering what you’d pay for a cake at a New York bakery but also the least expensive item on the LEVANTeast menu.

 

So, what makes this cake the city’s premier birthday treat? For starters, the presentation is hardly demure: The cake arrives with a giant sparkler in it, hissing and showering the air with sparks. Once the flame has sputtered out, you’re left with an unassuming slice of layer cake: four thin layers of chocolate genoise stuck together with four equally thin layers of pastry cream, then frosted in a sugary butter cream icing with a smattering of rainbow sprinkles strewn about like edible confetti.

Let’s retire that idiotic phrase, “That’s just icing on the cake.” Frosting is everything, while the cake is a mere vessel providing dignity for those of us who would otherwise be shoveling spoonfuls of frosting into our mouths. But while the fluffy, buttery European kind of butter cream is lovely, it’s not what most Americans grew up licking off their fingers. Chef Brunacci wisely chooses the sugary, sturdy American kind, more like the frosting of “Mom’s sheet cake” (the one she secretly bought at the bakery or grocery store) than the frosting of “Mom’s cupcakes” (the ones she made from a box for you to take to school). And Chef Brunacci’s achievement is elevating the quality of the frosting without sacrificing any of its nostalgia-inducing flavor or, crucially, the consistency of the frosting. Not nearly as granulated and crusty as the kind you remember fondly, but the exact right amount of over-sweetness and just grainy enough to bring you back to cakes gone by. This might not remind you of your actual childhood birthday cake, but it will definitely get you reminiscing about past celebrations. Why even wait for your birthday?

It’s so good, just eat it for the hell of it.

> LEVANTeast at The Hotel on Rivington

LEVANTeast at The Hotel On Rivington, 107 Rivington St. (betw. Ludlow & Essex Sts.), 212-475-2600

 

A piece of cake: the best $8 you can spend on the Lower East Side.