A soon-to-launch online pastry service attempts to fuse savoury ingredients with sweet treats but doesn’t quite get the balance right
The assortment of desserts from Sugar Play. Pics/Rane Ashish
The boxes came filled with promise. The brief we were given about Sugar Play, an upcoming online patisserie, was to expect desserts that paired savoury ingredients with all things saccharine.
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The Konkan Opera
The desserts looked pretty — swirling shades of yellow, green and brown. So far, so good. Despite being a sweet-savoury hybrid, as we sampled the gourmet-styled desserts, we felt that the balance was off.
Chef Amit Mehta at work in his kitchen in Powai. Pic/Datta Kumbhar
For instance, the innovatively titled Original Sin (Rs 230) — an egg-free dessert — had a cloying taste of clove that when paired with sea salt caramel, made for a strong, not too nice flavour. In Serendipity (R180), the strong ginger flavour gave us severe chai cravings but the dessert again has two strong flavours, from the olive oil and dark chocolate. The Painkiller (R260) made us feel like we were having a cocktail — it had passionfruit, bayleaf, vodka, raisins and mint. We liked the sweet-sour passionfruit flavour but couldn’t taste anything else.
It took us three attempts to figure out the layer of pea mash in the Limewire (Rs 260) — an egg-free dessert with a lovely sour, lime and blueberry taste, but a hard, thick crust.
Of the lot, our love for all things coastal meant we liked the Konkan Opera (Rs 230) — a beautiful mix of kokum, honey, and dark chocolate that left a lovely sour aftertaste. We liked the opposing flavours in the Paradox (R230), an eggless dessert served in a jar. The nutty coconut, sweet jaggery, pineapple and crunchy hazelnut added interesting textures with a strong hit of black pepper.
Amit Mehta, a Le Cordon Bleu (London) chef is the man behind Sugar Play. While his desserts are visually stunning, we’d love to see a better balance of sweet and savoury elements if he wishes to stand out in an already crowded dessert-scape.
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