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I have a sweet tooth.

Actually, that is not quite accurate.

I have a very large sweet tooth. A sweet molar. A sweet jaw. Perhaps an entire sweet dental structure.

I love desserts.

I love carrot cake, which may be my favorite dessert of all time, especially if the frosting is thick enough to require structural engineering. I love chocolate in almost all of its forms. I love chocolate ice cream. I love mint chocolate chip ice cream. I love brownies. I love cookies. I love Fig Newtons. I love peanut M&M’s. I love the little pieces of chocolate that somehow mysteriously disappear from the pantry even though no one in the household admits to eating them.

I know all the arguments against sugar.

I know about calories. I know about blood sugar. I know about moderation. I know about the stern looks from doctors, nutritionists, and well-meaning friends who say things like, “You know, Neil, at your age…”

Yes, I know.

And no, I am not giving up dessert.

Not now. Not in my remaining years. Not voluntarily. Not without a fight.

Dessert, to me, is not just food. Dessert is the final punctuation mark on a meal. It is the exclamation point. Sometimes, if the cake is good enough, it is three exclamation points.

Dessert is celebration. Dessert is reward. Dessert is childhood. Dessert is birthdays. Dessert is family dinners. Dessert is the thing you pretend you are too full for until someone else orders one and asks for “extra forks.”

Dessert is the sweet little conspiracy at the end of a respectable meal.

And then, the other day, something happened that stopped me cold.

I was in Urbano’s Mexican Restaurant in Lincoln, California, with some friends. We had finished our main meal. The plates were being cleared. The conversation was pleasant. The evening was unfolding as evenings in restaurants are supposed to unfold.

So I did what I have done thousands of times before.

I asked the waiter to see the dessert menu.

He looked at me and said, “We don’t have one.”

I assumed I had misunderstood.

“You don’t have one here at the table?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “We don’t have a dessert menu.”

“No dessert menu?”

“No.”

“No flan?”

“No.”

“No churros?”

“No.”

“No tres leches cake?”

“No.”

“No ice cream?”

“No.”

“No dessert at all?”

“No dessert.”

I have been around a long time. Almost eight decades. I have eaten in fancy restaurants, ordinary restaurants, roadside diners, airport restaurants, hotel coffee shops, neighborhood joints, hamburger stands, Italian restaurants, Chinese restaurants, steakhouses, seafood restaurants, barbecue places, Mexican restaurants, Greek restaurants, delis, cafeterias, and more places than I could possibly remember.

And as far as I can recall, this was the first time in my life that I sat down in a real restaurant, had a real meal, asked for dessert, and was told:

There is none.

Nothing.

Nada.

Now, I want to be fair to Urbano’s. The meal was fine. The waiter was polite. The restaurant may have perfectly good business reasons for keeping its menu simple. I am not writing a restaurant review.

I am writing a dessert-lover’s lament.

But still.

No dessert?

Really?

In a Mexican restaurant?

No flan? No churros? No tres leches cake? Not even a scoop of vanilla ice cream with a little chocolate sauce and a reluctant cherry on top?

This was not a case of being out of carrot cake.

This was not even a case of the flan being sold out.

This was a more existential problem.

There was no sweet ending available.

I went home wondering: Is this a thing?

Are there restaurants in America that simply do not serve dessert?

The answer, apparently, is yes.

Not most restaurants. Not the restaurants I want to frequent. But yes, some restaurants do not offer dessert, or at least do not make it a regular part of their menu.

And when you think about it from the restaurant’s point of view, you can begin to see why.

Desserts take work. They require ingredients. They require storage. They require refrigeration. They require someone to prepare them, plate them, explain them, and sell them. If the restaurant is small, busy, short-staffed, or trying to keep the menu simple, dessert may be one more complication.

Some restaurants may assume people are already too full.

Some may figure customers will go somewhere else for ice cream.

Some may decide the profit is not worth the trouble.

Some may simply not care.

But I care.

Deeply.

Perhaps too deeply.

Because to me, dessert is not just an add-on. It is part of the ritual.

When the waiter brings the dessert menu, something happens. Everyone at the table changes slightly. People who moments earlier claimed to be full suddenly lean forward. Someone says, “I’ll just look.” Someone else says, “Maybe we should share.” Someone else says, “I shouldn’t, but…”

Then the negotiation begins.

One dessert? Two desserts? Forks for everyone? Does the chocolate cake come warm? Is there ice cream with that? How big is the serving? Is the carrot cake homemade?

These are not trivial questions.

These are the questions of civilization.

The dessert menu gives a table one more chance to linger. One more chance to laugh. One more chance to turn a meal into a memory.

Without dessert, dinner ends too abruptly.

It is like a song without the last verse.

A movie without the closing scene.

A letter without “love.”

A church service without the benediction.

A birthday party without cake.

And maybe that is why this little moment stayed with me.

It was not just that I wanted something sweet. Of course I did. I almost always do.

It was that I expected the possibility of something sweet.

The possibility matters.

Even if I had not ordered dessert, I wanted to know that dessert was there. I wanted to browse. I wanted to consider. I wanted to be tempted. I wanted to say, “I really shouldn’t,” and then perhaps do it anyway.

That, too, is one of life’s pleasures.

At my age, I am increasingly aware of the small rituals that give shape and joy to ordinary days. A cup of coffee in the morning. A good conversation with a friend. A walk. A memory. A laugh. A newspaper. A piece of chocolate. A dessert menu at the end of a meal.

None of these things is grand.

But taken together, they make life sweeter.

Literally and otherwise.

So I do not want to overstate the case. Urbano’s did not commit a crime. The waiter did not violate the Geneva Conventions. No one needs to call Congress. No blue-ribbon commission needs to be appointed. The Supreme Court does not need to determine whether Americans have a constitutional right to flan.

Still, I was shocked.

Not disappointed.

Shocked.

Disappointment is when they are out of carrot cake.

Shock is when they have decided that carrot cake, brownies, cookies, ice cream, flan, churros, and every other form of edible happiness have no place in the building.

And maybe that is the real point.

Dessert is not necessary.

Neither are flowers on the table. Neither is music. Neither is a handwritten note. Neither is a hug. Neither is a sunset. Neither is saying “I love you” when the other person already knows.

But life is not made meaningful only by what is necessary.

Sometimes it is made meaningful by what is extra.

The sweet thing.

The unnecessary thing.

The thing we could live without, but would rather not.

So here is my modest plea to restaurants everywhere:

Please do not give up on dessert.

Keep the flan. Keep the churros. Keep the carrot cake. Keep the brownies. Keep the ice cream. Keep the cookies. Keep the little menu that arrives after the plates are cleared and gives everyone at the table permission to dream for one more minute.

And if you really must operate without dessert, at least warn people like me at the door.

A simple sign will do:

No desserts served here. Sweet-toothed customers enter at their own risk.

I would still come in.

Maybe.

But I would stop for ice cream on the way home.