The dish: Marie Antionette
The restaurant: Barton G. The Restaurant in Miami Beach
The chef/owner: Jessica Scott and Barton G. Weiss
Prep level: Heavy
“Every dessert has 10-15 recipes so it can take all day to prep. Staying organized is the biggest task.”
The key ingredients:
- Cotton candy
- Blackberry Jam
- Almond Buttercream
The staples: Bombolini
The Barton G. Weiss brand is all about shock, awe, and experience, so it comes as little surprise that a dessert at his eponymous restaurant can not only be experienced through eating, but also wearing—guests have been caught wearing the pink cotton candy Marie Antoinette hair as they are leaving the restaurant, Weiss says. And that makes a perfect snap for Instagram.
The 4-foot towering cotton candy pompadour adorns a plastic head and is lit from the inside with small twinkle lights, the only non-edible components of the dessert piece. Below it, guests will find bombolini cupcakes filled with house-made blackberry jam and topped with almond buttercream.
“Chef Jessica used to work at a cheese store, and they had a panini filled with blackberry jam and cinnamon almond butter and double cream brie. She wanted to make it into a sweet dessert, and the bombolini was the perfect answer,” Weiss says of the pastry component.
The wig, meanwhile, has been a mainstay at the restaurant. “Everything at Barton G. is unapologetically over-the-top. … I wanted a symbol of excess and who better than Marie Antionette.” And it takes a bit of finesse, Weiss says, practice more than anything. Some wigs take two minutes, others more, depending on what type of hair day she’s having, he says.
