A sweet and savory surprise

Restaurateur Deborah Hansen ’86, proprietor of Taberna de Haro in Brookline, Mass., can surprise even jaded diners. Take the dessert she prepared for a Boston Globe food writer and his companion, an apparently mundane arrangement of dark chocolate topped with cocoa powder and what looked like granulated sugar. Then came the first surprise: Hansen poured olive oil all over it. Then, as the diners tasted the result, came the second surprise: the white granules were salt, not sugar. “The dark chocolate is bitter, sweet and creamy,” wrote Globe writer Ike DeLorenzo. “The cocoa powder is bitter and astringent. The salt is savory and, well, salty. And the olive oil is fruity, fragrant — and everywhere. The effect is glorious.” (View Text)