If January is the month to diet and make up for holiday excess, then it only follows that February is the month to indulge. Thus, for the February edition of Where to Eat, CultureMap's monthly column recommending restaurants to try, we dive into desserts: the newest, the most intriguing, the most decadent. Speaking of sweet things, we have a list for Valentine's Day dinners, as well as a list for V-Day ideas that don't involve going out to restaurants at all.

Here's the sweetest Where to Eat of all: 10 must-try desserts.

Chip City Cookies
New York-based chain with locations across the Northeast and Florida is taking a run at the booming cookie market, which is currently populated by chains whose cookies seem to be nothing more than "sweet." Chip City's cookies are thick and made with high-quality ingredients, summoning the ultra-thick cookies first created by famed Levain Bakery in New York. Chip City has numerous flavors such as chocolate chip, cookies & cream, and the confetti cookie, a sugar cookie flecked with colorful confetti bits. The first Texas location opened in McKinney in 2025, and a second location is about to open in Frisco at Dallas North Tollway and Lebanon Road.

Crispy Cones
Ice cream shop chain that appeared on Shark Tank just opened a location in Plano — its second in the area, following one that debuted in North Richland Hills in 2025. It's an innovative concept that places as much attention on the cone as it does the ice cream. Their cone is fashioned after the "chimney cone," a hollow, sweet pastry with roots in Eastern European with a texture that's more like a croissant: crisp on the outside but soft and fluffy inside. And then they fill it with creamy soft-serve ice cream in flavors such as vanilla, chocolate, swirl, or seasonal flavors like pistachio or cookie dough.

Curuba Colombian Kitchen
Mom-and-pop featuring authentic Colombian food opened in Allen in 2025 with arepas, the corn patties filled with cheese and shredded meat, and empanadas with choice of fillings from chicken, brisket, vegan, shrimp, or ground beef. They have a big selection of sweets: tres leches cake, passion fruit mousse, rice pudding, with in-house bakery turning out Latin cakes and treats such as milhoja, a layered puff pastry. The item generating buzz is their rendition of tiramisu, into which they fold mashed curuba, a tropical fruit also known as banana passion fruit, which is also their namesake — giving the dessert a refreshing tropical twist.

Del Frisco's Grille
The lemon cake is one of the best cakes of all, a far better cake than Italian cream cake with its yucky array of tiny mealy chopped nuts (which do not belong in a cake); the chocolate cake, which overwhelms everything in its path; and the vanilla cake, which has no reason to exist. When it comes to lemon cakes, there may no better example than the Lemon Doberge cake at Del Frisco's Grille, a six-layer marvel featuring lemon cake, lemon buttercream icing, and a lemon glaze drizzle. Del Frisco's Grille itself pronounces it to be "exquisite," and who would dare argue.

Gyu Kaku
This international chain based in Tokyo now has two Dallas locations, including Addison and a second that just opened in Deep Ellum. They specialize in Japanese barbecue, aka yakiniku, in which raw meat is brought for diners to grill at the table themselves. Their dessert menu includes make-your-own s'mores — a perfect dish for this place, since every table has its own built-in grill. But don't overlook the green tea tiramisu, a hybrid that gives the classic Italian dessert a cool Asian theme by layering vanilla cake with matcha ice cream.

IYKYK Mochi Churro
Unusual dessert shop that just opened near Dallas Love Field specializes in Korean-style mochi churros — a hybrid street food treat that combines churros — the Mexican classic fried doughnut — with mochi, the Japanese rice cake with the chewy texture. To make the churros, IYKYK uses the same rice flour commonly used for mochi, which makes the churros chewier on the inside with a fried-crisp shell. (It also makes them gluten-free.) In addition to mochi churros, they also offer soft-serve ice cream in exotic and Asian-inspired flavors including ube, Earl Grey, matcha, and chocolate, for $4.50.

Keke Japanese Cheesecake & Drinks
Cozy bakery recently opened in Sachse with desserts and beverages, in particular Japanese-style cheesecakes and matcha drinks in more than a dozen varieties. Unlike dense New York-style cheesecakes, Japanese-style cheesecakes are soft and fluffy, thanks to their combination of cream cheese with whipped meringue. Keke has four flavors: original, chocolate, Oreo, and coconut pandan, which has a pronounced vanilla flavor. They also do Basque cheesecakes, a favorite from Spain with a burnt brown top, as well as lava cakes with molten centers like matcha, chocolate, or cheese.

Green tea mille cake at Mango MangoPhoto courtesy of Mango Mango

Mango Mango
New York-based Asian dessert chain with a location in Plano, at 2205 N. Central Expwy., calls itself the "House of Desserts" and fittingly so. They have all kinds of exotic ice cream, sundaes, tiramisu, mousse cakes, crepes, waffles, fluffy shaved ice, and more. The must-get is their mille cake — the irresistible layer cake made famous by Lady M Cake Boutique in New York, featuring paper-thin crepes stacked one atop each other, layered with flavored fillings such as green tea or mango cream, resulting in a delectably dense, almost cheesecake-like texture, $9 a slice.

Mexican Sugar
Local chain serving Mexican and Latin dishes is semi-famous for its Chocolate Avocado Cake, featuring a moist chocolate cake paired with avocado mousse, cinnamon meringue, and a vanilla rum crème anglaise. While its dense, fudge-like texture is surely more than decadent, it is perhaps the fact that it has avocado on its ingredient list — adding a richness in a sneaky "you can't taste the avocado" way — that makes it a talker.

Pietro’s Italian Bakery
Beloved family-owned bakery in Frisco opened in 2020 with a case-ful of Italian pastries: cannoli, sfogliatella, tiramisu, biscotti, cakes, and Italian butter cookies, baked from scratch with quality ingredients and old-world techniques. Their cakes in flavors such as carrot cake and red velvet boast many layers, making for a stately slice; the limoncello, featuring lemon-infused Sicilian sponge cake with Italian mascarpone mousse filling — is a local favorite. Take home a pastry sampler box with cannolis, lobster tail, Napoleon pastry, and chocolate eclair.