Mackie has been known to ask for the dessert menu at the same time the dinner menu. She’s been known to order dessert at the same time as dinner – can’t risk the kitchen running out of what she wants. She has even been known to ask for her dessert to be delivered before our meal.

With the opening of Candybar, I saw the perfect opportunity to cut out the unnecessary steps and get Mackie straight to what she wants – dessert. When we arrived, I made sure that the “sweet” side of the menu was face up so we wouldn’t be bothered with the “savory” side.

Alas, when expectations run high, disappointment runs deep.

We sampled the amuse, four desserts (two tasting orders with two selections each) and the milk and cookies finale. Of the six items, only the blood orange baked Alaska was not noticeably salty. Everything else ranged from annoyingly salty to offensively so.

The amuse, a sparkling Meyer lemonade, was good but with a bothersome salty aftertaste. Who puts salt in lemonade???

Unfortunately, the amuse was a harbinger of things to come. We’d ask the “who puts salt in XYZ?” question again and again.

The blue cheese panna cotta would have made a nice, savory appetizer but was totally out of place as a dessert. The chocolate brioche with balsamic caramel ice cream tasted mainly like salt. The milk chocolate parfait was – guess what – salty, not to mention irritatingly deconstructed.

The absurdity led Mackie to suggest that someone played an April Fools’ joke on the chef, dumping salt into his sugar box, and that the chef still hadn’t noticed!

We hoped to salvage something with the milk and cookies finale but our losing streak continued. The “milk” – a combination of milk, cream and dulce de leche, according to our waitress – was the most offensively salty part of the evening. Filter out the milk solids and this stuff could have been used as a saline IV! Excuse me, but dulce means sweet, not salty!!! 

The peanut butter cookie was about the size of a quarter. I thought it was good but Mackie was so appalled that she started laughing hysterically. She burst out, “I hate this freakin’ place!” Fortunately, she was snickering so uproariously, I don’t think anyone else understood her eruption.

I suggested that this would be a good time for her to go outside for a smoke while I settled the bill. Even that couldn’t be done expeditiously. I paid our $40+ check with a $100 bill, thinking that the check was large enough that breaking a Ben wouldn’t be a big deal.  I was wrong. It took five to 10 minutes, the efforts of at least three people and two apologies from our waitress for my change to arrive.

A sidelight to this whole fiasco was coffee, or, more precisely, the lack thereof. We left the house in search of coffee. I asked Mackie if she’d be up for a little surprise if coffee was involved. Oops, the surprise was on me – Candybar doesn’t have coffee. None. Nada. Zilch. Our waitress explained that they’re getting Blue Bottle but there was some sort of delay so no coffee was available. Peeps, buy a few pounds at Starbucks and bring a coffee maker from home!!!

In the Chron’s What’s New section, Stacy Finz wrote about Candybar, “Pastry chef Jake Godby puts a twist on traditional favorites.” True and the use of the singular “twist” is dead on, perhaps in a way the author didn’t intend – it’s just salt, salt and more salt.

I really wanted to like Candybar. With the pedigree of the staff (Fifth Floor, Boulevard, Coi, French Laundry) there’s no reason it shouldn’t be great. But, guys, get over the fixation on inventiveness and start creating desserts that taste, well, like desserts. If you need an extra palate, I’ll happily volunteer!

The way things stand now, there’s no “sweet” side to Candybar’s menu. It’s all “savory,” even the things that aren’t supposed to be.