Nutella has spread (pardon the pun) all over Westbury and Carle Place. Local ice cream and frozen yogurt stores find Nutella an increasingly popular topping. Grocery stores take pains to keep it in stock, as we Nutella-lovers smear it on just about anything that will stand still.
And this is just the tip of the hazelnut-flavored iceberg.
Here in Westbury and Carle Place, as well as all around Nassau County, I’ve found many clever—and very surprising—uses for Nutella. In desserts, of course, but also on pizza, in (not just on) ice cream, in beverages, in peanut butter sandwiches and even with meat.
These days, here in Nassau, Nutella dessert pizza is a specialty of several restaurants with wood- or coal-burning hearths. At Cafe Formaggio in Carle Place you can get your pizza topped with Nutella, strawberries, bananas, apples, caramel and powdered sugar, or with marshmallows and brownies, or half and half.
Chi in Westbury makes a Nutella pizza with bananas and strawberries. Recently, Carvel introduced a Nutella ice cream. For a more sophisticated cold Nutella dessert, try the Nutella/banana flavored gelato at Baci Gelato in Williston Park. The Baci Nutella gelato is also on the menu at Revel in Garden City.
Brian Fishman of Sweet Karma Bakery in Plainview makes a Bananas Foster Dome of milk chocolate, Nutella mousse and banana cream on top of a chocolate almond meringue that is then glazed with yellow-colored white chocolate, drizzled with milk chocolate, and crowned with a roasted hazelnut. At K Pacho in New Hyde Park there’s a crispy banana Nutella torta with raspberry glaze.
What is about bananas and Nutella, I asked Steven Guaso of Fresco Crêperie Café in Williston Park who has banana Nutella crepe on his menu.
“It think the three textures of the crepe, banana and Nutella really work well together,” he said.
The Nutella litany is vast.
The new Spuntino Italian tapas restaurant in Westbury offers Nutella as a dip for their bites of hot fried dough. At Plancha in Garden City, there’s a Nutella dessert fondue (Nutella fondue is also at Plancha’s sister restaurant Salumi in Massapequa).
About Nutella and meat—leave it to the imaginative Carlos Roman, the chef/owner of Vinoco in Mineola to come up with Nutella in meatballs and also in his ropa vieja quesadilla. To BBQ meatballs, he brings blue cheese, peach, chocolate and Nutella; the quesadilla is filled with pulled beef stew, caramelized banana, Nutella and banana aioli. It works.
He analyzes the essence of Nutella as it mixes with other ingredients:
“The nuttiness of the hazelnut goes straight to your nose; add a little salt and it opens up—add some garlic to make it go faster through your nose; now add banana, which brings the necessary sweetness. I like to challenge the senses. It confuses you,” he says. “The day you figure me out is the day I lose business.”
