Spot

Spot 
13 St. Marks Place, New York, NY 10003 
(212) 677-5670

This place is super cute for dessert dates.  Lost in the hustle and bustle of St. Marks Place, you can easily not spot Spot.  You have to walk down a set of stairs to get to the entrance.  Inside, it's very low-key and quiet with cozy decor that plays with an indoor/outdoor feel.  Right when you enter, you trek over faux grass carpet/mat.  The walls inside are all wood panels, the main menu is written on a chalk board, and there are grass pots intermittently dispersed all around the place as decoration (not sure if the grass is real - if you happen to go, let me know?).

At first it was kind of annoying and deceptive when they asked us if we wanted still or sparkling water (both they charged extra for, but failed to inform us).  I ordered a Thai Milk Tea and the Chocolate Ganache Cake.  My friend ordered the Mocha Maldon Salt Caramel cupcake and the Jackfruit Cake.  The Mocha cupcake was all right.  You can really taste the mocha and coffee in the frosting.  The Jackfruit cake was super moist with hints of rum toffee flavor and sitting next to a soft pool of basil seed, coconut ice cream and diced fruit.

The Thai Milk Tea wasn't that great.  It had the strong tea flavor, but lacked the sweetness and strong condensed milk flavors of traditional Thai milk teas.  I'm usually pretty picky about things being overly sweet, but in this case, I wished the tea was a little sweeter.  The Chocolate Ganache Cake was a circus.  I thought the concept of the dessert was somewhat convoluted.  There was so much going on on my plate I was a little bit confused.  The ganache cake was surrounded by sliced poached pear, tea ice cream, carmelized rice crispies, chocolate balls, and something that looked like green (cookie) crumbs.  The ganache itself was cold and soft in a melt-in-your-mouth kind of way.  I liked the smooth, soft texture of the chocolate.  The ice cream had very bold, strong tea flavors.  The poached pear was somewhat bland in comparison to the other dominant flavors on the plate.  The rice crispies were actually really tasty - they were crispy, unlike the soft chewy kind of rice crispies we're all familiar with and it was very buttery in taste.  There were a lot of interesting flavors and textures in this dish, but for some reason they didn't work well with one another.  -11/28/09

OVERALL RATING: * * *
FOOD: * * *
SERVICE: * * 1/2
AMBIANCE: * * * *
VALUE: * 1/2

PROS:

• Cute, mellow atmosphere
  

CONS:

• A little overpriced
  

SUGGESTIONS:

• They only accept cash so don't forget the Benjamins