Extraordinary Desserts- Banker’s Hill

Extraordinary Desserts
2929 5th Ave
San Diego, CA 92103
(619) 294-2132

www.extraordinarydesserts.com

So I made yet another visit to Extraordinary Desserts.  This time I went to the Hillcrest location though for a comparison.  I think after being to both, I prefer the Little Italy location.  While the Hillcrest has a cozy, quaint feel; this smaller location also means longer lines, slower service, longer waits.

The outside tables have little tealights and there are cute fake koi fish decorating the fence.

The inside has some booths and some more tables.  I like the pressed dried flowers glass pieces on the wall.

Since the Little Italy location is so big, you can browse all the desserts before ordering.  However, since the Hillcrest location is so small, you can't browse the desserts first.  So the line moves pretty slow because people in line are still deciding what they want.  Also because of the compact space, not all the desserts are labeled, and some of the desserts are at the back counters.  This leads to many people in the line asking the cashier about different desserts, making the wait even longer.

One of the great things about Extraordinary Desserts is they change their desserts, so their is always different ones available. Here are some of the desserts that they had the day I visited:

Boyfriend and I ordered the chocolate croissant bread pudding which I had heard so many good things about:

On the yelp reviews people said the bread pudding is served warm with ice cream.  I can see why this dessert is so good.  I love chocolate croissants and making it into a bread pudding is even better.  They put a beautiful chocolate syrup on the plate, which was a nice touch.  The bread pudding wasn't very warm though.  It was slightly above room temperature, so I think it had been heated at some point, but it took so long to arrive that it wasn't warm anymore by the time I ate it.  Also there was this large scoop, of what I thought was vanilla ice cream, but ended up being whip cream.  The whole time I was eating the bread pudding, I kept craving for some ice cream to go with it.  I think if served properly, this could be an amazing dessert.  I'll get it again next time I'm at the Little Italy location.  Even not s
erved warm, the bread pudding was pretty yummy.

We also tried the homemade ice cream.  We tried a bowl with passionfruit and mango.

The mango was okay.  The passion fruit tasted just like passion fruit! I really felt like I was eating a passion fruit.

I wanted to try some fruit cakes after trying so many chocolate ones last time.  So I ordered the passion fruit torte and the Shangri-la to go.

Here is the passion fruit torte:

This cake didn't look that pretty, especially compared to the Shangri-La.  I wasn't expecting much when I bit into it.  Boy was I surprised.  This cake was amazing.  I didn't taste any passion fruit though.  Not in the cake or in the frosting, though it's supposedly in there.  But still, I've eaten a lot of different fruit cakes in my life, but this was the best fruit cake I've ever eaten.  It wasn't that sweet.  The cake portion is light and soaked in something.  There are layers of fruit.  A layer of kiwi and a layer of strawberry. The fruit layers are sweet, but not too sweet. Delish! I think I found my birthday cake for next year..

We also got the Shangri-La. It's a guava cake.  I loved how beautiful it looked:

The taste was just okay though.  I couldn't really taste guava.  The cake was not as light and tasty as the passion fruit torte.