Editor’s note: Food & Dining Magazine’s Spring 2026 print publication (Vol. 89) could not be published in the usual manner owing to the unexpected death in late February of our friend, founder, publisher and mentor John Carlos White. F&D’s future has yet to be determined. However, our Spring 2026 columns, profiles and features are being released online prior to Kentucky Derby 152: The SPRING 2026 (Vol. 89) F & D Compendium.
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At Retta’s, Dessert is Transformed
Ben Deutsch didn’t have a grand plan to move to Louisville and open a chef-driven dessert restaurant. He just wanted to save his cat.
By Cary Stemle | Photos by Dan Dry
You might assume the ice cream cart outside the restaurant at 2011 Frankfort Avenue provides a solid clue about what’s going on inside. But then you watch the chef plate a parsnip steeped in Earl Grey tea and slice it diagonally like a piece of meat—and now you have questions.
Welcome to Retta’s, chef Ben Deutsch’s self-described “Appalachian dessert restaurant,” where scoops sell for $6 and a seven-course dessert tasting menu goes for $85.
The parsnip stars in a dish called Sticky Toffee Parsnip, the chef’s take on the British classic sticky toffee pudding.
“I love parsnips,” Deutsch tells my friend Denise and me as we sit at his chef’s table on a recent Friday night. “They’re low on the list of most consumed vegetables, but you’ll always find them on your plate in a British roast dinner. I love taking something so ubiquitous and turning it into the focus here. We cook it for about 16 hours, and we wind up with something reminiscent of a date, texture-wise.”
Six-foot-five and bowed over his workspace, Deutsch uses long tweezers to pluck tiny ingredients from a collection of containers. He places them on the plate just so while narrating the dish — the toffee sauce is made with Willett Distillery’s Old Bardstown whiskey, he says, and the cultured clotted cream comes from black walnuts that are prevalent around the region in the fall.
“We put it all together and get what I think feels like sticky toffee pudding, but with a very Appalachian root to it,” Deutsch says, firing up a blowtorch. “We serve this on a bed of smoldering hay, because we roast the parsnips with hay and sage, and it kinda brings it full...Read more
