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2009-02-11
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The 20 of us -- blended crowd with the old and new, fared well in a fulfilling meal in Ngau Tau Kok. The dinner was great, but when the crowd subsided disappearing into the night, the 20 of us were yearning for more. The sweet smell of desserts came to our senses. In a flash we arrived at the entrance of Ruby Tuesday, where fellow dessert lovers sworn never to return since they surrendered in previous instances under the glory of the legendary tallcake. While some may be deemed to fail with the
1. Never go in groups. 1-4 (ideal in booths), 5-10 (2 round tables), 11-15 (3 round adjacent tables), anything beyond 15 is beyond manageable, unless you count room for standing.
2. Stick with desserts that have been blessed with the oven (baked), sundaes are not particularly impressive, only if you like whipped cream a lot (and a lot of it)
3. Opt for chocolate, ditch the berries or berry-flavored anything. My personal experience of strawberry syrup took me back with some painful childhood memories of cough syrups and bad Halloween candies.
I did not just make up these rules, here's my analysis.
Double Chocolate Cake ($76) presented itself like a Molten Chocolate Cake, except it has gone mutated in a perfect round shape with an opening on the top, where the chocolate lava was supposed to slowly oozes out. It didn't, in fact when we spoon into the cake, the lava didn't move one bit. The texture was a moist pudding with great chocolate taste. The dark chocolate stands out without the cloying sweetness after. The molten part, you will have better elsewhere.
Blondie ($76) was made the same way brownie does, except without chocolate in the batter, instead the chocolate takes form in chunks together with nuts, to offer multiple layers of textures. The blondie itself lends the browness from moist brown sugar. The darker the brown sugar, the deeper the caramel taste it is. This one is alright, and the nuts were wonderfully toasted. It will certainly benefit with ice cream.
Chocolate Tallcake ($96) -- Try to picture it. 3 layers of Devil's Food Cake (dense and moist chocolate cake), each about 2-3 inches thick, with chocolate mousse as filling. Top that with squirts of whipped cream, and go a la mode. Put this entire thing in a smaller-sized English Trifle Bowl, and an overdose of chocolate syrup squiggles. The dessert represented the typical generosity of American dining, where size really matters. The cake layers had moist crumbs and the mousse wasn't particularly sweet at all. The whipped cream has gone overboard, oh, and did I mention vanilla icecream too? The icecream oozed into the chocolate cake as each spoonful of this would be chocolate overdose. No wonder so many have surrendered under it.
Brownie Sundae ($76) -- Favorite of the evening, as simplicity spoke for itself. Dense square of chocolate brownies so fudgy that a spoon could almost stand in the middle without tilting. One bite of it (with icecream) could take you straight to chocolate heavn. As we cooed over how wonderful it tasted, I realized we have slowly pushed the tallcake away and gathered around this plated dessert instead. The hot-cold contrast may be overplayed in many desserts, but brownies + icecream should, and will never go out of style.
Strawberry and Icecream ($56) -- Something you can pull off on a lazy night at home. The fanned out strawberries around vanilla icecream was nothing surprising. The berries weren't very ripe to begin with, and that, no matter how good the ice cream is, couldn't save an otherwise sloppy attempt to impress.
Strawberry Tallcake ($96) -- The 3 layers of cake were now plain sponge cake which looked dried-up, with a pink mousse that's supposedly strawberry flavored. The syrup was the manufactured kind and strawberries were in small bits. Now this is when strawberry and whipped cream can exist in the same dish and fail to impress fans of either ingredient. Not advisable unless you like your cake crumbly and not very whipped whipped cream.
Ice cream sundae ($56 each) -- Dutch chocolate is a safe bet, with chopped up chocolate bits blending through, almost like a chunky frosty shake. Tropical Mango will not bring your senses to the tropics unless you count the egg yolk golden hue in the icecream's colour. Then there is the whipped cream again.
Having shared all the desserts with a group of 20, we've had the best and worst on the dessert menu, literally the entire dessert menu. (some of them had nachos and artichoke dip) Chocolate was embraced, and others frowned upon. Conversation flowed across the long table as we called it a night and were ready for the next gathering. We exchanged phone numbers, and candidly took pictures of each other and with each other...Now how's this to round up a wonderful night out?
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