WEIRD-dessert alert!

Floral parfaits, herbal ice creams and eerie foams are on the march again, turning the last courses of too many restaurant meals into a “Fear Factor” climax.

After a brief retreat, when the “eww”-inducing stinkers were mercifully yanked from menus uptown (Aix) and down (Cru) and replaced with more palatable confections, the sinister sweets have regrouped.

Call me a dinosaur, but I hate out-there desserts that incorporate savory and herbal elements and mix incompatible essences with lunatic abandon. So do most diners.

Anyone for Sapa’s peanut butter tapioca and jasmine parfait? Or Devi’s pineapple gelee with mascarpone mousse and black pepperpineapple slaw?

Nobody goes to WD50, Wylie Dufresne’s Clinton Street envelope-stretcher, expecting a banana split.

But a friend with a tryanythingonce palate groaned over the taste and the look of butternut squash sorbet with pumpkin seed cake and chocolate “soil” – fineground chocolate like dirt on the plate.

“The mingling of the flavors was horrible,” he said. “Chocolate and squash!” Where do the overwrought inedibles come from? Many a lowly pastry chef feels lost in the shadows of a householdname executive chef, who may earn twice a dessertmeister’s $60,000-$70,000 salary and enjoy infinitely more fame.

At the same time, desserts allow less creative latitude than other courses – as a celebrated restaurateur once told me, “At the end of the day, a cake is a cake. A mousse is a mousse is a mousse.” The tension between the need for exposure and the inherent limitations of the craft yields the sort of Frankenstein confections better left in the laboratory.

For years, Aix uptown got more exposure for Jehangir Mehta’s licorice panna cotta and its ill-conceived ilk than for Didier Virot’s appetizers and entrees.

Since Mehta left last winter and his lineup was dumped for the likes of vanilla panna cotta with blood orange and chocolate sauce, 60 percent of customers now order dessert compared with 20 percent in the past, says Aix’s rep.

New Dona on East 53rd offers a compelling southern-European menu from chef Michael Psilakis.

Pastry chef Nancy Olson turns out the best lemon soufflé and torrone semifreddo I’ve ever had.

But she ventured into weird-and-wacky territory with olive oil panna cotta, zucchini chocolate cake and walnut-thyme ice cream. This week, they’re happily being replaced by chocolate cake with almond and cinnamon to lend a baklava-like mood, roasted almond gelato and Greek yogurt – not a moment too soon.

Picholine is an old favorite of mine. But I was appalled on a recent visit that the $94, prix-fixe-only dinner forced me to choose among such miserable meal-closers as celery meringue and a chocolate soufflé with fennel ice cream.

Desserts are not supposed to compete with appetizers and entrees, but to punctuate the meal like a tightly contained, sweet exclamation point.

Nobody wants an endless stream of créme brulees and butterscotch sundaes.

But the best desserts remember that they’re dessert – like Marc Aumont’s lemon Napoleon at The Modern, packing a supernova of exotic fruits, and Marcus Samuelsson’s Arctic Circle, a gorgeous composition of blueberry sorbet on a spire of goat cheese parfait.

Yes, there is a place for savory elements in desserts, but it’s not a game for amateurs. Francois Payard, the great pastry chef of Payard Bistro, points out that fennel, Swiss chard and tarragon are commonly used in the South of France.

This week, he’s using a touch of Thai basil and rosemary yogurt in spring angel food cake.

“I used to use a lot of savory elements,” Payard says, but they didn’t appeal to “the very conservative people on the Upper East Side” who gobble up patisserie favorites like millefeuilles, opera cake and fruit tartlets.

I’d trust Payard to make whipped cream and onions taste good, but I don’t trust most others with a grain of herb or spice. Payard acknowledges, “Some people go a little too far – it depends on the execution.” Some restaurants don’t figure it out until it’s too late. Among V Steakhouse’s many problems, quirky desserts like “deconstructed” lemon meringue pie turned off legions of carnivores.

No wonder V went vamoose – a lesson for every place that sends you home on a sour note.