Mini Food Review: Flying Fish Cafes Carmelized Banana Napoleon

Cited as another one of the Flying Fish Cafes signature dishes, this dessert fell short of my expectations. Let me start by saying that once upon a time, I had a dessert at the California Grill that was so good, burned such a mark on my memory, that anything with a similar name will automatically pique my interest and draw my scorn when it fails to measure up. Wow-that's a lot serious words considering we're talking about dessert. But truth be told-I take dessert seriously. Ok so back to this one. This dessert consists of of caramelized bananas, creme caramel & banana mousse layered between crispy phyllo rectangles. The plate is garnished with an exotic fruit coulis (mango lol), bitter chocolate, whipped cream, powdered sugar and fresh mint. The banana mousse is quite good, but more of a light banana whipped cream then a mousse-but good never-the-less. From there it nose dives. The cream caramel seems almost over cooked to me. The texture is not pleasant at all. Not egg-custardly like a nice brulee and not the gelatin constancy of a flan. Instead it's almost rubbery and the flavor leads me to think they over cooked the sugar before they worked the creme caramel. The bananas were not caramelized as much as sauteed in sugar, but not on a high enough heat to give them that nice "burnt" sugar taste. The phyllo would have benefited from a nice sugar glaze before baking. It would have added a bit of flavor, instead it tasted just dry & bland. The garnish was fine, but as it was just garnish-it didn't make or break the dish. For me the Flying Fish Cafes weak spot tends to be dessert-but of course I'd have to of course try more-just to be sure. As for this dish not something I'd order again.