Best Desserts in Gatlinburg

These Gatlinburg eateries will satisfy your vacation sweet tooth

One of the points of vacation is live a little and splurge a little. Do some things that you might not normally do in your daily life. Judging by the propensity of dessert-only restaurants and candy shops in Gatlinburg, one of those indulgences is incredibly sweet, delectable dessert offerings. 

How important is dessert in Gatlinburg? Do a search for dessert in Gatlinburg and see how many places pop up. The Beef Jerky outlet shows up for goodness’ sake. Dessert in Gatlinburg is omnipresent and in the eye of the beholder. 

But amidst such an abundance of options how do you really choose? How do you make sure that when you allow yourself to indulge, you’re getting the most out of the experience?

Well readers, like Olga in the knight’s cave in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” allow us to choose for you. We promise to choose wisely. 

The best desserts in Gatlinburg

Waffle De Lys

I find Waffle De Lys’ business model fascinating. There’s one location in the Woodbury Premium Outlets in Central Valley, New York – it’s inside the Market Hall, if you’re wondering. And two on the strip in Gatlinburg, a couple of blocks apart. AND THAT’S IT! You can’t get Waffle De Lys anyplace else in the world unless you book the Waffle De Lys food trucks. I’m assuming there’s more than one, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, and Tennessee.

What does Waffle De Lys offer? Authentic Belgian Waffles. I have been to Belgium, I can legally say that. The waffles are topped with ice cream and a variety of sweet options. A dessert from Waffle De Lys is everything you want in a vacation dessert. It’s decadent, indulgent, maddeningly delicious and all a little ridiculous at the same time.

The Oh La LA is a Belgian waffle topped with Salted Caramel, raspberry coulis – a thin puree used as sauce, fyi – banana, caramelized hazelnut crumbs and homemade whipped cream. If you can get past the embarrassment of walking up to another adult human being and saying “I’ll take the Oh La La” then it’s a perfect vacation dessert. 

Melting Pot

While we here at thesmokies.com do not make it a habit of promoting national chains, we do want to give credit where credit is due. The Melting Pot’s chocolate fondue course is a perfect end of the evening dessert option for families, couples, and groups of friends. Theoretically, it’s perfect for singles, too if you can get past the social stigma of ordering a smoldering pot of melted chocolate for a table of one.

Also, the Melting Pot is welcoming of groups coming in just to order the dessert course. Sometimes when you got to a “relatively” nice restaurant and order a single dessert, it isn’t received as warmly as it might be. The Melting Pot politely removes that from our list of social mores.

What do you get from the Melting Pot’s dessert menu? Choose from a variety of melted chocolate options – including a flaming turtle, milk chocolate is melted with caramel flambéed and topped with candied pecans. Somewhat shockingly if you are not familiar with fondue, you’re not just supposed to guzzle this down at the table. Nope. They give you a dessert charcuterie board of sorts filled with fruit and a variety of sweet treats like cheesecake chunks and marshmallows and more to be – and this is the good part – dipped in the melted, ooey-gooey chocolate.

Donut Friar

I can hear your skepticism now. “Are donuts really desserts?”  First of all, I will not be hemmed in by convention. If beef jerky can be dessert – than by God so can donuts. And frankly, the good people at the Donut Friar have not been up since 3 a.m., prepping for their 5 a.m. opening just to have you on here besmirching their good name and reputation. You owe them an apology. Next time you’re in Gatlinburg, go by get a dozen assorted and a half dozen éclair and then bring them to me to show how truly repentant you are. 

Peddler Steakhouse

It has frankly never occurred to me to go to the Peddler just for dessert so I can’t say how cool they’d be with it. You might want to treat yourself to a massive hand cut steak and a trip to the salad bar before dessert just to be polite.

But once you’ve finished with the formalities of a steak dinner, get the Peddler Mud Pie for dessert. What is a Mud Pie? It’s Chocolate peanut butter ice cream on an Oreo cookie crust with homemade whipped cream and chocolate sauce on top. It is a decadent vacation dessert. If that seems like too much, they also have a fruit cobbler with a dollop of ice cream that is practically perfect. I’m a sucker for a good cobbler. 

And not to overdo it, but Kristi’s Chocolate Cake is a viable option as well. The menu’s description of Kristi’s Chocolate Cake is short, sweet and unassuming: “Warm cake, vanilla ice cream with hot fudge”. When you order it, you assume you’re going to receive a standard slice of cake. But the thing that shows up at your table looks more like an entire cake. Or a mini cake at least. This huge “slice” of cake stands at about 3 inches tall. It’s insanely rich, and incredibly decadent. It has the perfect mixture of cake and ice cream with a generous amount of fudge and what tastes like homemade whipped cream.

The creameries

The Smoky Mountains are awash in creameries – ice cream specialty stores each vying to make the most farcical ice cream concoction ever devised by the ingenuity of man. Asking me to choose between them is folly. It is an impossible task. You might as well ask me to choose my favorite star in the sky. You want a good vacation dessert? Find an ice creamery. Go in and tell them to hit you with their best shot then gird yourself.

If you absolutely must have a recommendation, try the Crazy Mason Milkshake Bar. It is known for its crazy, over-the-top creations. And each of these crazy concoctions is designed to look like a work of art. Served in mason jars, each cup is rimmed with layers of sugary goodness and stacked with full-sized toppings that topple over the jar in a way that seems to defy gravity. Some of the craziest, larger-than-life toppings include a full-sized uncut banana, an entire cupcake, a slice of 3-layer coconut cake, an entire slice of pecan pie and a whole popsicle, just to name a few. My personal favorite is the Crazy Cookie Dream

Calhoun’s

Any real fan of a barbecue joint knows that the classic, almost mandatory post-barbecue dessert is banana pudding. But friends, I have eaten at Dreamland Barbecue in Tuscaloosa, one of the great barbecue joints in all the world and the sacred place where they keep the best banana pudding ever made in the history of the universe.

It would be unfair of me to enter Calhoun’s, an excellent and very reputable barbecue purveyor, and ask them to bring before me their version of Banana Pudding which comes with Macadamia nuts. So, I don’t. Instead, I order their Key Lime Pie which is tart and sweet and delicious and does not live in the shadow of the Gods of Alabama barbecue. But if chocolate is your thing, do not sleep on the Hershey’s Triple Chocolate Fudgecake served with vanilla ice cream atop.

Do you have a favorite dessert in Gatlinburg? Let us know in the comments!