I see....thanks for that.

I have a funny feeling a little bit of tobacco tea added to some sort of dish would be delicious.... I have no idea what that dish would be, though.

Hmm, Hot and Spicy. It's What? It's Not!


By MELISSA CLARK
Published: January 31, 2001

LAST summer in Paris, I had dinner at Michel Rostang, a Michelin two-star restaurant with a reputation for innovative cuisine. ''Havana cigar,'' the dessert menu read, ''with Cognac mousse.'' Of course, I had to order it.

Out came a long, crisp cylinder speckled with brown and filled with a creamy caramel and Cognac mousse. The flavor was vaguely green and spicy, sweet with a slight smoky undertone. The name seemed like nothing more than a cute visual joke, until the waiter explained: those little brown specks actually were crumbled Cuban cigars.

A few months later, I was chatting with another French chef, Bernard Dance, about the flavors of ice cream he pairs with Champagne. Like ginger and cinnamon. And tobacco.

I thought it was just a French eccentricity, and then I came home and found tobacco in desserts all over New York.

At Vong, Pierre Reboul, the pastry chef, serves caramelized pineapple surrounded by a drizzle of tobacco caramel sauce. Jean-Michel Bergougnoux serves a dessert similar to Mr. Rostang's cigar at L'Absinthe. Philippe Conticini, the head chef at Petrossian Cafe, uses pipe tobacco to make a sundae sauce. Will Goldfarb, a consulting pastry chef at the Ryland Inn in New Jersey, uses Drum cigarette tobacco to make a dessert he calls ''chocolate, smoked.''

''For a chef it's important to always do something new, and to provoke people,'' said Mr. Dance, the chef at Château de Saran in Épernay. ''Even if they don't like it at first, it challenges them.''

But despite the obvious bravado of it and its interesting culinary nuances, tobacco as an ingredient in American restaurants is likely to be no more than a flash in the pan. Chefs, after the briefest flirtation with it, are already more aware than ever of how repugnant many Americans find tobacco in any form. And then, of course, there's the explosive rejection the idea of using tobacco in food elicits from some health experts, even if they cannot say for sure just how harmful -- or innocuous -- it is likely to be when eaten occasionally.

A mere fad or not, dangerous or not, the results can be fascinating. Tobacco adds a haunting richness that recalls an oak-aged spirit, with notes of leather, wet earth and sweet mulled-wine spices. It also has a heat as searing as a chili pepper, which is why it is used with a light hand.

At Vong, Mr. Reboul infuses about three tablespoons of a premium chopped cigar into about three cups of thin caramel sauce, then strains out the tobacco, leaving just its essence behind. About a tablespoon of sauce is drizzled around the pineapple.

For his chocolate dessert, which has been served as a special at the Ryland Inn, Mr. Goldfarb infuses tobacco into boiling water as if he were making tea, then strains it and uses it to make firm little gelatin cubes. He also infuses tobacco into heavy cream, which he then strains, chills and whips with a touch of sugar for a kind of sabayon that is rich, sweet, spicy and a little bitter.

Mr. Goldfarb's fascination with tobacco began when he worked at El Bulli, the influential Michelin three-star restaurant near Barcelona, Spain, where the chef, Ferrán Adría, often incorporates it into sweets.

Mr. Bergougnoux, who is a disciple of Mr. Rostang, grinds tobacco into a powder and flavors the tuile batter for his cigars with just a few pinches, but it is enough to add the fragrant note he is looking for.

Mr. Reboul and Mr. Bergougnoux insist upon high quality cigars, like H. Uppmann, which they shred and use as is. But Mr. Goldfarb prefers the more intense flavor of Drum rolling tobacco, though he tames it with a blanching in salted water.

Fresh tobacco leaves can also lend a characteristic pungency, though these are available only in spring and summer.

For a cigar dinner at the Hudson River Club a few years ago, Waldy Malouf wrapped thin strips of fresh Connecticut tobacco leaves around striped bass.

''It was good,'' Mr. Malouf recalled, ''but I haven't had the urge to make it since.''

Historically, tobacco has been used medicinally for thousands of years in North and South America, where it is indigenous. Brewed into a tea or taken as snuff, it was administered to cure a range of ailments, including constipation, bleeding gums, upset stomach and headache.

In the 1980's, some French chefs, like Mr. Rostang, began to experiment with it. He usually uses it in desserts, like wrapping a whole pineapple in a tobacco leaf.

Other chefs followed his lead in upscale restaurants all over Europe, including Italy, where tobacco is infused into custard sauces.

Today, despite the distinctive flavor and novelty tobacco can add to a menu, some chefs have qualms about cooking with it. For instance, Alex Garcia, the chef of Patria, was tempted to serve a coffee-and-tobacco-infused chocolate truffle.

''I do Latin American cuisine, and since tobacco is the epitome of the Cubans, I really wanted to do a dessert called coffee and cigarettes,'' he said. ''I just don't feel comfortable with using regular tobacco or chopped up cigars.''

In the British edition of ''The Art of the Tart'' (Random House, 2000), a cookbook by Tamasin Day-Lewis, she included a recipe for fig tart with tobacco syrup, which is based on one she ate at the Lindsay House restaurant in London. Her editor in New York, however, took the tobacco syrup out of the recipe in the American edition.

''It's an absolutely wonderful dish,'' Ms. Day-Lewis said. ''The gingery innards of figs are not unlike tobacco, and the combination is magical. You have the dryness of the tobacco alongside the bosky figs. It's really sad that it's not in the American version.''

Her American editor, Pamela Cannon, said, ''I just didn't want anyone to open the book onto that recipe and be turned off.''

Mr. Reboul got a wary reaction from diners at Vong when he served his caramelized pineapple garnished with a scoop of tobacco ice cream. ''In New York, with the whole anti-tobacco thing, too many people wouldn't even touch it,'' he said.

So he changed the ice cream to vanilla, and now garnishes the plate with a tobacco caramel sauce. The flavors of the dish are the same if you eat all the components at once, Mr. Reboul added, but if someone doesn't want the spoon to touch the sauce, it doesn't have to.

But that would be a shame. The sauce had both heat and spiciness, almost as if it were infused with chilies, cinnamon and cloves.

It was more than a novelty. It was delicious.

Correction: February 7, 2001, Wednesday An article last Wednesday about the use of tobacco as an ingredient in restaurant dishes misidentified the pastry chef at Patria, who does not use it. He is Alex Asteínza. Alex Garcia was formerly a chef at the restaurant, but he no longer works there.