The banana split gets a glow up

The banana split was invented over 100 years ago, reportedly by David “Doc” Strickler, a University of Pittsburgh pharmacy student who was working as a soda jerk in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Since then it has been enjoyed – in nearly the same format as the original – by countless people across the United States and beyond. Although its star has been waning in the past couple of decades, pastry chefs have recently begun to upgrade this indulgent dessert, as Eater’s Bettina Makalintal explains.

North Carolina pastry chef Savannah Foltz tweaks nearly every portion of the banana split, from adding toasted notes to the ice cream base and the pineapple topping, to delivering elements of crunch with freeze-dried strawberries and brûléed bananas. The strawberries “add [a] really crunchy, salty element that I always feel like a banana split is missing,” says Foltz.

Other chefs are bringing in flavors from their backgrounds, like Laila Bazahm, who grew up in the Philippines and started her career in Singapore. She also brûlées her bananas, which is a nod to the Filipino dessert turon, in which bananas are fried in a crispy, caramel-drizzled wrapper. To this she adds coconut ice cream, pandan cream, and cherries compressed in a Singapore Sling mixture, which further echo flavors from her background. Jonathan Wiley, who operates an Italian American kitchen residency in a Portland, Oregon jazz club, adds Italian flair to his banana split with spumoni ice cream and Galliano in the pineapple topping.

One technique that nearly all of these chefs employ is to brûlée the bananas, which can be the weak point of their namesake dish. Unless the banana is at the peak of ripeness, it can be too starchy or bland. Briefly sauteing the banana allows less than ideal fruit to be elevated to something caramelized and sweet, says Makalintal.