Bananas Foster…Tableside? Here’s the Story

A dessert made with liquor? Who doesn’t want to eat that! Today, we are talking about Bananas Foster – the ingredients, the history, and why, at Kevin’s Bar & Restaurant, we serve it to our customers tableside.

The Ingredients

Bananas Foster is a delicious dessert typically made from fresh bananas and creamy vanilla ice cream, topped with a sauce made from butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, rum (the darker the rum the better!), and banana liqueur.

To make this dish, the bananas, butter, and sugar are cooked together first. Then the rum and banana liqueur are added and ignited by heat. To finish this dessert, the bananas are smothered in sweet, rich, rum-spiked sauce, then served over the vanilla ice cream.

Bananas Foster can be served with a variety of different toppings too, ranging from whipped cream to different types of nuts like almonds, pecans, or walnuts (candied or not). You can also drizzle more of that mouthwatering rum sauce on it as well.

The most interesting aspect about most renditions of Bananas Foster is that the dessert is made into a tableside presentation known as flambé, which is something we will explain a little later on.

A Brief History Lesson

This now-American classic dessert was created at Brennan’s, a restaurant in New Orleans, in 1951. Ella Brennan and the restaurant’s chef, Paul Blangé, were tasked to come up with a new dessert for a dinner honoring Richard Foster for being named the chairman of the New Orleans Crime Commission.

These Bananas Are on Fire!

We had to exclude this part of the article from earlier sections because it was so deserving of its own praise. Bananas Foster is a one-of-a-kind dessert because of the way it’s served to customers past and present – on fire!

Okay, we may be exaggerating just a tad. Bananas Foster is often prepared as a tableside performance known as flambé. This is a cooking procedure in which some type of alcohol is added to a hot pan to create a burst of flames.

In the case of Bananas Foster, the rum and banana liqueur are added to the bananas cooking in the sizzling pan, and the heat ignites the alcohol. The heat cooks away the strength of the alcohol, and the flames keep the customers entertained. This has been a tradition that started at Brennan’s in 1951 and continues to this day.

Bananas Foster at Kevin’s

Bananas Foster is also served tableside at Kevin’s Bar & Restaurant just like Ella Brennan’s and Paul Blangé’s original dish. It is so good it is worth the visit just for dessert!

We believe tableside preparations are an exceptional addition to the fine dining experience. If you want dinner followed by a show you can eat, then you should make a reservation at Kevin’s today! You can make reservations online or by phone: 570-285-3071.