Dessert Story

195 Little Bourke St, Melbourne 3000
Date visited: 4th October 2012

Spring has truly set in!  It was a hot 29 degree day and MerlinFan wanted to try Dessert Story, which is a shop that specialises in Taiwanese and Hong Kong desserts.  

I quite liked the decor in the shop - it was decorated head to toe with red Chinese lanterns and an interesting wallpaper depicting shelves of books (behind me so you can't quite see it in the photo).  The shop itself was not too small, but they could have made better use of the space had they not used such massive tables - I suppose they wanted to go for the full oriental experience :P

It was early afternoon on a weekday so it wasn't completely full.  MerlinFan and I grabbed a menu and found ourselves a table.  There were pages of desserts ranging from puddings, herbal series, sago, taro balls, snow ice, shaved ice etc etc and even pearl drinks.  After deciding what we wanted, I saved our table whilst MerlinFan went to order at the counter.  She said the staff was friendly and efficient enough.  

MerlinFan and I decided to order two to share.  Our orders came fairly quickly.

The Mango Snow Ice with Crystal Jelly and Mango Juice with Popping Pearl was what we both came to try.  The snow ice was finer and creamier than regular shaved ice, more like shaved frozen yoghurt or sorbet.  I loved the chewy jelly for texture and pieces of mango.  The popping pearls were like huge caviar pieces that exploded in your mouth.  The portion was huge - honestly I don't think I my photos quite captured the true size of the dessert.

Mango snow ice $9.90

We also had the Original Tofu Pudding in Sugar Syrup.  It was too hot to have a warm dessert so we had it cold.  This was just okay.  For one, the tofu wasn't silky smooth like it should be.  And two, there was too much tofu pudding in the bowl and not enough sugar syrup.  Tofu pudding is pretty bland on its own, so most of the dessert ended up being pretty bland.

Original Tofu Pudding $5.00

The snow ice dessert was definitely the better of the two.  At almost $10, it was a bit pricey (the same price as a whole meal), however the portions of our snow ice and the other shaved ice desserts brought to other tables were huge so you can be totally Asian and just get one to share between two.

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