Kathy, you are thinking of the Melting Pot. They have restaurants in a few cities - lots of fun, I think.

Absolutely, Kathy. It was from some dinky Sainsbury's cookbook, and just great. I hope mother still has it.

That's it--I had Stock Pot on the brain, and I knew that wasn't right.

I did have a really good raspberry sorbet the one time I went to a top-notch steakhouse in the Chicago 'burbs. I still mean to take my dad to either Gibson's or Gene and Georgetti's downtown sometime this summer--it'll cost a bit, but we both loves the red meat, and I've been promising him for a year or so. This time, I'll have enough money (the other time, I only had $120, and it wasn't enough for the two of us--Dad had to make up the rest).

There's at least one in Chicago, Kathy. IJS.

Pre-zactly. Chocolate mousse in a pie shell, with whipped cream. No spiders.

That's french silk to me.

Also, yum. I'm not a fan of the Boston Cream.

All tiramisu: oh so awesome. Best tiramisu, made from scratch by the wife of a teeny-tiny storefront mostly-organic coffeehouse the size of a postage stamp (the coffeehouse; the tiramisu was not only not the size of a postage stamp, it was in a loaflike pan as long as my arm -- for a party, not just me) at 18th and Balboa in San Francisco. Many years ago. Probably no longer there.

Like ita, I have no one single favorite. Just lots and lots of fond memories:

A single perfect petit four with a very, very thin layer of extremely almondy marzipan on top
A gross and vulgar but utterly delicious grasshopper pie made with lots of fresh whipped cream and what tasted like an entire bottle of creme de menthe
Trader Joe's praline pecans
Vanilla creme caramel with flecks of vanilla bean and a gorgeous cracked sugar crust on top
Bread pudding souffle with bourbon sauce at Commander's Palace

and so on and so forth. I don't play favorites. It's just not fair to them all.

Possibly. Boston Cream Pie for me is whipped cream over a light, fluffy aeriation of chocolate. It weighs nothing, and has every superlative of taste.

That's not Boston Cream Pie at all. Boston cream pie isn't pie at all, for that matter.

Cake with custard stuff. Like it too, because when it comes to sugar, I'm a whore.

We'll have to see if we can get a bunch of Chicagoistas over to the Melting Pot sometime this year, Brenda! Fondue works better if you have a group, I think.

Oh, and the best chocolate dessert I ever had at home was my mom's Texas Cake, so-called because it was made in a huge sheet pan. It was basically a slightly cakier brownie with an awesomely rich nutty chocolate cream frosting. If she hadn't lost her recipe box when she moved out East, we'd still have the recipe for it.

Kathy, I have that recipe. Let me go find it.

I don't know if there is more than one, but the Chicago Melting Pot I went to had really cool dark booths so you were sort of separated from other groups. I think it would be lots of fun with 6+ people.

And I see there's one in Raleigh. maybe I'll have to go one of these days.