MoMo & Coco

Best Favourite NYC Asian Dessert Cafes (Flushing and Long Island City edition)

Introduction

One of our most popular NYC dessert guides compiles all the best Asian dessert cafes in Manhattan where you can sit down and relax with a plate (or several) of desserts.  If you are like us and wondering what lies beyond Manhattan, here is a short list of our favourite modern Asian dessert cafes further afield. Take that G train, 7 train, or share an Uber, and let your dessert imagination run super wild! 🙂 

And don’t forget our other best Asian desserts in NYC guides:

  • Guide to the best Chinatown bakeries in Manhattan, NYC here;
  • Guide to the best Asian desserts in Manhattan, NYC here;
  • Guide to the best Asian street food desserts (such as kuih, taiyaki, bungeoppang etc)  here;
  • Full list of all our favourite Asian desserts can be found here. 

As with all our round-up reviews, we keep updating, so do bookmark this page!

For the craziest-looking desserts in NYC

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Gonggan, Flushing, New York.
  • ☑ Must eat dessert: The giant corn croffle.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story: Just a year ago, we were yawning over the city’s seemingly never-ending obsession with croissants and other same-same-same bakery treats. Then, Gonggan opened up. If you appreciate creativity over traditionalism, and/or if you like your desserts not too sweet, this modern Korean dessert cafe is made for you. On your first visit, you will probably order the viral “Rainbow Cake” ($19) that sees a pot of rainbow cream playfully spilled into a pool over a barely-baked cake base, or the “Sweet Potato Cake” ($19) that seems as though it has been shovelled out from a rainforest, resplendent with colourful moss and meringue mushrooms. We actually love more, Gonggan’s numerous colourful drinks, and its giant croissants and croffles ($16), especially those featuring Korean flavours such as yakgwa, corn, injeolmi, mugwort etc. Each dessert is oversized, so definitely bring at least one friend along.

For elevated Chinese bakery treats

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Sweet Cake Bakery, Flushing, Manhattan.
  • ☑ Must eat dessert: Bubble tea cream puff, osmanthus cheesecake, green tea lychee cake.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story: One of our most visited dessert blog posts is our guide to the best Chinese bakery treats in NYC’s Chinatown. If you are looking for a place that offers Chinese bakery-style cakes that are a little more elevated, we adore Sweet Cake in Flushing. It houses a long glass counter showcasing a large variety of vibrantly-hued cakes that often incorporate fruity or herbal elements. There are cakes ($9-12) with a soft pillowy steamed texture, and others with a creamy cheesecake base. There are also enormous black sesame cream puffs ($5.50) showered with bubble tea tapioca pearls.  Every time we visit Flushing, we make it a point to box up a few cakes from this bakery for the long commute home. 🙂

For pretty mousse cakes

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Cafe W Bakery, Murray Hill, New York. 
  • ☑ Must eat dessert: The earl grey cassis, and lime pineapple mousse cakes.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story: A few streets away from the busy Korean restaurants that make up Murray Hill, Cafe W is a rare, spacious dessert bakery spot. It has a very broad food and drinks offering, which tempts you to revisit for many different reasons — for some simple pastries, to shovel some shaved ice into your mouth, to order from the extensive drinks menu, or in our case,  we made a beeline for Cafe W’s pretty mousse cakes ($13). They are beautifully crafted, subtly flavoured, lightly textured, and…not too sweet! 🙂

For trompe-l’oeil desserts 

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Roam Cafe & Gallery, Long Island City, New York. 
  • ☑ Short and sweet story: Some years ago before the pandemic, trompe l’oeil desserts were all the rage. One of our favourite patisseries, Dominique Ansel, brought it back in two more recent pop-ups (see here and here), but otherwise, this particular dessert trend seems to have since faded out. 😦  That is…until we discovered it quietly blooming in the backstreets of Long Island City. At Roam Cafe & Gallery, there’s an array of trompe l’oeil mousse cakes. Don’t miss also, the mille crepe cakes, fruit sponge cakes, or the coconut jelly in large mason glass jars. See previous review here. 

For giant shaved ice 

  • ☑ Dessert destinations: 
  • ☑ Short and sweet story: The best dessert to beat the extreme humidity of an NYC summer is shaved ice. Over the years, we must have hunted down every shaved ice spot in Manhattan, from specialty shaved ice dessert spots to those found in Korean or Japanese restaurants. Outside of Manhattan itself, Flushing is another epicentre for shaved ice, and our two most favourite spots are Cafe Auburndale and Cocohodo. Both offer gargantuan shaved ice. Aside from Heuk Hwa Dang in Koreatown, you would be hard-pressed to find shaved ice of this size in Manhattan. Bring a friend, or three! 

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