By Stefanie Gans
When I pitched the dessert issue to my editor and publisher I didn’t imagine a night where I would skip dinner and instead eat three different desserts at three different restaurants in two different towns. My publisher joked he wanted to weigh me before and after I finished working on this sugar-bomb cover story. I laughed at the time. But then I woke up after my dessert binge and still felt sick. The life of a food writer isn’t as glamorous as it sounds.
What I ended up finding across Northern Virginia—a fried cupcake in Fairfax, a perfect chocolate mousse in Woodbridge, a pile of pretzels and popcorn with melted dark chocolate ganache (called The Junk) in Mosaic District‘s Angelika Film Center & Cafe—made up for my prolonged upset stomach. A pastry chef is an endangered species in the slim-profit restaurant world, but even in places where a chef pulls savory and sweet duty, there’s a lot to be grateful for on the chocolate side of the menu. Even at the movie theater.
