Following a successful event menu for Lunar New Year by teaming up with Black Star Pastry (BSP), the kitchen at increasingly popular dumpling restaurant Lotus, The Galeries have linked with premium French manufacturer Valrhona to put together a set menu designed especially for this coming Mother’s Day. The very marriage of some of Sydney’s most popular dumplings with a highly reputable dessert would be enough of a drawcard, but the title only scratches the surface of this inventive menu.
Lotus’ Head Pastry Chef Tiffany Jones (ex-Four in Hand) and BSP’s Exec. Chef Sam Yeo have drawn on the decadence of Valrohna chocolate for an ambitious round of dessert dishes, unique and each with their own Mum-inspired idea behind them, which follow a platter of Lotus’ popular Hand-Crafted Dumplings, just so you have a bit of savoury before all that sweetness, curated towards some of the restaurant’s most popular dumplings including Steamed Jade Prawn dumplings, Steamed Shiitake Mushroom dumplings, and Fresh Scallop Sui Mai.
The dessert experience begins with a palate-cleansing Passionfruit Bubble that’s garnished with shaved Jivara and crispy pearls, a spoonful that’s more about texture than taste, clean with a strong back palate of fresh passionfruit and a nice crunch from the pearls.
First comes the Mother’s Bleeding Heart, and straight away you get the sense of what this collaboration is trying to do. Inspired by the unconditional love that defines the average mother, it’s a very visually pleasing dessert, grounded around a coconut mousse sphere that’s built with Opalys (Valrhona’s velvety pure white chocolate) and dressed with liquid pomegranate, coconut meringue, and black sesame. It’s a stunning dessert, really highlighting the balance of the Opalys with flavours that are soft on the palate but still rich enough to carry across that luxurious aesthetic.
Second dessert is another very visually appealing dish, centered around the refreshing flavour of rhubarb with a Caramelia Bavarois that has been layered with the rhubarb cloud, rhubarb paper, and an almond praline feuilletine. They’ve named it the Heart Burst: Mama’s Pride, anchoring it with Valrhona’s Caramelia which uses genuine dairy-based caramel made from skim milk and butter as opposed to caramelised sugar, something which results in a silkier, smoother taste then your standard caramel chocolate.
The third and final plate is Patience of a Chess Master named, quite obviously, for a mother’s patience as well as her intellect, fashioned as a chequerboard with Valrhona’s Manjari 64% dark chocolate and fluffy matcha with mint ice cream, matcha-mallow, mint aero chocolate, chocolate jelly, chocolate soil, and baby mint. There’s a beautiful bouquet of red fruit in both the taste and nose of the Manjari which hits as soon as the dessert is presented, balanced nicely by the complexity of the ingredients used.
Each guest finished with a box of Valrhona to take home, which includes their signature Salted Caramel Ganache and the rich Almond Hazelnut Praline.
The Mother’s Day degustation menu is offered across three days (6th to 8th May) for $78 per person at Lotus, The Galeries. It’s set for lunch and dinner sessions on Friday 6th and Saturday 7th May, and lunch only for Sunday 8th May. Tickets are available HERE.
Lotus, the Galeries
Address: Level 1, The Galeries, 500 George St, Sydney
Lotus, the Galeries is one of the selections for our Mother’s Day ’16 in Sydney guide, which you can read HERE
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