disPASSIONate

24th June, 2012

While breathing a sigh of pity for the disassembly of historic monuments due to reconstruction projects，some newborn cafes remind me to face the reality and look out the change after the renewal. Passion by Gerard Dubois was one of them, I thought.

In between the hoist's noise and old-Hongkong like district, there's a relaxing cafe that makes me ignore the hustle and bustle of the city, that is, the Passion by Gerard Dubois, which is located at the newly built apartment.

Like most cafes, french pasteries, quiche, salad, freshly-baked bread, cakes and beverages can be found in this cozy place, but the extra element that the Passion gives is the home-like warmth through the rustic decoration.

Even more, when I went through the display cupboard, it seemed that I was quite familiar with those pasteries and cakes. Or I should say it in this way -- I'd seen the brand before the opening of this shop. Yeah, desserts of Passion by Gerard Dubois have been sold in the La Rose Noire Bakery in Threesixty (Element/ The Landmark), which may not be as pretty as those in this cafe. That's why I noticed that the packaging of bread was printed with La Rose Noire Bakery when I stepped into this place. In spite of the disappointment after knowing that the brand wasn't new as I thought, I still kept my desire of her desserts, same as my friend. 

 From the huge variety of desserts, we at first chose 4 pieces of cakes and 3 pieces of macarons to see if we could finish them or not.

 Macarons（HK$18 each）: They are respectively chocolate (dark brown), salted caramel (light brown) and earl grey (green). Both of them were chewy and crispy. The fillings were yet too sweet and could be milder and smoothier. The chocolate one was the most outstanding one in terms of the flavour. The salted caramel one was a bit weak while the earl grey one got an extract-flavour. However, I was still pleased with the rare drizzling of chocolate on top of macarons. It may be too harsh to judge these macarons since they only cost $18, as compared with the heaven chocolate granche macarons of Jean Paul Hevin (HK$30), but LGB's taste better than these.

 Mango Mont Blanc (HK$36): To be frank, I'm not interested in Mont Blanc after having a small piece made of the artificial chestnut powder by a local bakery many years ago. Being influenced by the passion of Mont Blanc of my friend, I agreed to have one piece.

The chestnut flavour was lighter then I expected and was unfortunately covered by the milky cream, despite of the right smoothness. When we reached the middle of the cake, we frowned for the combination of mango and chestnut. They just didn't match together. The thick, sweet and rich mango could not compensate the foamy and weak chestnut.

 Tiramisu(HK$38): The dessert cup was lovely and could be taken away. (I later forgot to take it...) Simply looking at the dry cocoa powder, I thought that it was perfectly made. The mascapone cream was a bit dry, as well as the lady finger. We were hoping for a rich and intense flavour of coffee and aramatto but we weren't satisfied finally. The cup of tiramisu might have kept for a long time.We were probably unlucky to pick this cup that day.

 Mille Feuille (HK36): Two of us love Mille Feuille, or Napoleon, so this piece wasn't ignored. It was also not eliminated because we thought that it was the best piece of dessert. The pastry looked thinner than those of other cake shop, but was as crispy as others. You can see there are quite a number of layers in each piece of pastry. Of course, the pastry made by Mimosa is better than this. For the custard, we were surprised to see the two layers of custard were different. One was vanilla, made by vanilla seed, and the bottom one was salted caramel. Again, the custard was too light that we could hardly differentiate the different flavour. I think that It can be improved by a stronger buttery flavour on the pastry.

 La Pistache (HK$36): It was spongy and a bit moist. It was perfect if we only considered it as a piece of sponge cake. Yeah, it didn't have any pistachio flavour, or both of us could not taste any. All we tasted was the sour raspberry jam inside. What a pity.

 Since the above desserts were not satisfactory, we gave Passion one more chance by purchasing 2 more pieces.

Pear Danish(HK$17): There were actually 2 types of pear danish provided. The other one was the Pear Crumble Danish which was a box-shaped. We were attracted by the lovely pear shape, and also the childish biscuit stick, undoubtedly. XD The pastry was unexpectedly soft (weird to use this word) due to the heavy garnishing on the danish. With the limitation of the shape, there wasn't enough air spaces in between each layer. Yet, the pear was extremely gorgeous. Even though it was marinated, the pear tasted naturally and freshly. Very refreshing.

 

 Orange Opera(HK$36): As an Opera's fan (I mean cake only XD), the Passion might not affect my great impression on opera but absolutely made me feel sick. I appreciated that it was finely divided into 7 layers, however, the chocolate and coffee flavour was very weak and was totally replaced by the intense orange flavour. What was more, the orange might not be peeled well since the cake was bitterly sour. One thing that I admired was the brittle chocolate piece on the cake. This was unique.

 It might be crazy to have 2 girls consuming 6 pieces of cakes (a total of 13 pieces in another cake shop), but it was worthy to try new things although I was dispassionate of the change. This is the reality.

The Passion's desserts are sold in Threesixty