I don’t understand why chocolate desserts should include raspberries or other minds of annoying berries with the pesky seeds or the odd tart flavor that always seems to conflict with the sweet enveloping awesomeness that is a well done chocolate dessert.  Intrusions of that type spoil the dessert.  Leave the chocolate alone, it was doing fine by itself.

I mean, here I am, innocently sitting at my table, waiting for a nice chocolate bombe or ganache or layered something with a side of an even thicker chocolate sauce to arrive, and I find that some putz in the kitchen, also known as the executive chef has decided to show off his years of culinary school by throwing a bunch of raspberries around.

I wouldn’t want a bunch of chocolate in my strawberry shortcake, would you?  No.  Ergo, I don’t need a bunch of raspberries, which are too tart and therefore make the smoothness of the chocolate degrade and become too bitter, hanging with my chocolate diet suicide cake.

Chocolate cake is called chocolate cake for a reason.  It’s chocolate.  Leave it alone.  Who else agrees with me that good chocolate can stick up for itself.  That it can hold its own.  That it doesn’t need the help of some sissy raspberries, to defend its turf.  Right?

Put the raspberries in a sorbet if you must.  And serve them to the all-female table over there.  Or put them in a bowl to decorate the table.  But please don’t spoil my wonderful chocolate.  Hey chef! You want to coddle your ego?  Weave the berries into fabric and make a raspberry hat.  Be as creative as you want, but stop messing with my chocolate!

By the way, all you people who dip strawberries into liquefied chocolate, wait for it to cool and then it the whole thing ought to have your heads examined.  What you should do is this:  drink the chocolate before it cools, then put the strawberries on your kid’s cereal.

And while we’re at it, nuts have no business in ice cream.  Ice cream should be creamy.  Nuts interrupt the whole creamy idea.  Chunks of nuts don’t belong in ice cream.  Put em in a little Waterford crystal candy dish and stick em up your nose for all I care. But leave my ice cream alone.  And in general, chefs, you  little “I need the constant ego stroking to make me feel like all that money I spent on culinary school was worth it”  napoleon complex chefs, please! Stop screwing up my desserts!