I had read about Pistacia Vera from several local food bloggers, but never made the trip. A local restaurant organization, Dine Originals, has a gift certificate sale a couple times a year and PV is a member. I put my dessert-lovin' foot down and purchased one. Talked with J&D and they agreed a dessert happy hour might be worth a try. Well D was all like "perhaps we should have some sort of dinner before dessert". Whatever. Ok fine. Then I guess we should have a beer too if you're going to get all normal. So we had a bev at Club 185, the club voted most likely to look like a crack den from the outside. I like it on the inside, although they could use a more rounded beer list. next, Katzinger's for a sandwich (Reuben, yum, half of which was wrapped up for lunch the next day). Finally, PV awaited. Also known as my new favorite place in the whole world. The store was adorable and the desserts were amazing. There were 12 flavors of macarons. We settled on white chocolate coconut, strawberry balsamic, chocolate bergamot and mint chocolate. They have these gumdrops they call pate de fruit that are just amazing. We has cherry kirsch and grapefruit campari. We had a sweet wine tea cookie, a cashew caramel, a pistachio nougat and a pistachio mascarpone dacquoise. For the love of Mike. I can still taste every bite. I think my faves were the cherry kirsch pate de fruit and the pistachio mascarpone dacquoise. The former was this intense burst of flavor and the latter this light creamy nutty cloudy misty spongy stack of amazingness. Lookie:
