Gong Gan

"Gong Gan is something of an outlier in downtown Flushing: The Korean dessert shop is representative of a new wave of businesses in the neighborhood, boasting a youthful clientele along with unusual standout pastries. Slices of black tea cheesecake are topped with edible fungi, while supersized kouign amann is piped with colorful fillings like pistachio and matcha. At 5 p.m. the dessert shop turns into a natural wine bar, and most of the treats are sold out." - Eater Staff, Melissa McCart

"Gong Gan is a dessert cafe by day and a wine bar by night, and you should bookmark it for the next time you want to lowkey impress someone by picking an extremely cool place to meet up. The downstairs is bright and airy with lots of mirrors and avant-garde sculptural elements. The zany design extends to their signature cakes like a black tea cheesecake, decorated with a garden of colorful meringue mushrooms. A warm croffle topped with vanilla ice cream and a pile of grated brunost is more understated, but even more delicious. Upstairs, the atmosphere is a little darker and more date-night adjacent." - carina finn koeppicus, kenny yang, neha talreja, bryan kim

"If you’ve ever wished you could eat food from a cartoon in real life, Gong Gan is the place. This quirky Korean cafe-slash-natural wine bar in Flushing (right next door to Chong Qing Lao Zao—the itinerary writes itself) serves up spectacles like a psychedelic rainbow cake, doused tableside in layer after layer of colorful white chocolate, and a meringue mushroom-dotted sweet potato cheesecake that looks like it was swiped from the tea party in Alice in Wonderland. Gong Gan’s equally playful drinks and coffee menu is also worth a look. The (non-alcoholic) Gosu Ade is sweet, refreshing, and herbaceous, and served with an entire bunch of cilantro dramatically blooming out from the glass. (We took ours home and made dinner with it.)" - molly fitzpatrick, bryan kim, will hartman, willa moore, neha talreja

"The menu at this avant-garde bakery/cafe/wine bar in Flushing is constantly changing, so you might find yourself suggesting it for every future coffee date, just to see what kinds of zany cakes they’ve come up with now. The downstairs is bright and airy with lots of mirrors and sculptural elements, while the upstairs is a little darker and more date-night adjacent. Get a seasonal croffle sundae, like the mint choco, which has a warm squid ink croffle, chocolate ice cream and mint cream. " - willa moore, carina finn koeppicus, kenny yang

"Gong Gan in Flushing is a dessert cafe by day and a wine bar by night, and you should bookmark it for the next time you want to lowkey impress someone by picking an extremely cool place to meet up. The downstairs is bright, airy, and has lots of mirrors and avant-garde sculptural elements that mirror the zany designs of their signature cakes. Upstairs, the atmosphere is a little darker, more date-night adjacent. We can’t stop thinking about the warm croffle topped with vanilla ice cream and a pile of grated brunost, but the black tea cheesecake decorated with a garden of colorful meringue mushrooms is very good, too. " - Carina Finn