JARS by Favio Viviani

Yes, that Fabio.

If you watched Top Chef earlier seasons, then you likely recognize the name Fabio.  Apparently he has a dessert business.  And apparently there is one relatively near to where I live (well, over in Emeryville, but quasi-close to San Francisco?).  They have only 5 locations, which seem fairly random: St. Louis MO, Chicago, IL, Smyrna, GA, Laguna NIguel, CA, and the one near me, in Emeryville.  

"At JARS, we think outside the little box. And refuse to conform to a space filled with cookies, cupcakes and copycats. We’ve forced dessert outside of its comfort zone with an insanely adventurous twist on traditional treats from around the world. And because we know you can’t bottle adventure, we put it in JARS. We are JARS. And we invite the world to experience a new generation of dessert."

They make pudding jars, soft serve jars, and refreshers (beverages).  The puddings and soft serves are parfait style with layers of components, with bold claims about being a new generation of dessert.  Anyway, someone ordered the puddings for a celebration in my office, and they had some extra, so of course I snagged one, as I love basically all desserts, and puddings in particular.

The menu has some great sounding options, like a play on carrot cake with a cream cheese custard, candied pecans, and a buttercream rim (in addition to the carrot cake of course), a peach cobbler with peach compote/vanilla bean custard/pastry cream/pie crust, and of course a classic banana pudding inspired version, plus seasonal specials. 

Assorted Jars. $8.95 each.

I actually thought these were cupcake when I saw them, but once I picked it up I realized it was something else entirely.  The carnage remaining when I got to them was these 3 flavors, which seemed to be:

Red Velvet Cheesecake

"Vanilla Sweet Cream Cheese Custard, Red Velvet Cake, Vanilla Frosting, House-Baked Red Velvet Cookie."

Salted Caramel Brownie

"Crumbled Brownie Pieces, Chocolate Cake, Salted Caramel & Chocolate Custard, Chocolate Cake Rim."

Tres Leches Cake

"Soaked Vanilla Cake, Pastry Cream, Sweet Strawberries, Sugar coated rim."

Since it was late in the day and I don't have caffeine that late, my choice was easy, as two had chocolate in them: the tres leches cake.  The topping had slid off most of these in transit, but they still looked pretty great.

It was ... ok.  Not bad exactly, but slightly underwhelming.  If you had asked me what flavor it was, if I hadn't looked it up, I would have said strawberry shortcake perhaps, as I didn't really get tres leches vibes nor flavors from it at all.  

The cake was simple vanilla cake, fairly moist, not stale, decent enough.  The pastry cream was thick, rich, and had a slightly odd flavor to it that made it hard to eat a lot of in pudding form like this.  I think a little, like how you'd normally have it in most applications of pastry cream where it is just a filling would be fine, but as the base of the pudding it was just a bit much.  The white topping looked great, but it turned out to be that very stable kind of "whipped topping" that isn't actually whipped cream, but also isn't buttercream, and instead is just very sweet somewhat plastic tasting "creme".  I think that element was the most disappointing, as it just felt cheap and really had a plastic taste.  The berries were fresh and ripe.

Overall, it did all come together as an ok dessert - cake, thick pudding, topping, fruit, really a full dessert as I like to have, and the ratios were all good, it just wasn't great, and definitely wasn't tres leches.  Low 3/5.