Pierre Roelofs @ Café Rosamond; Desserts on Thursdays

(degusted 7th July, 2011)

We got here with really high expectations – and we were not let down! What a single chef can do in a tiny kitchen (you have to see it to believe it) is astounding.  We took a while to get onto this bandwagon, but a dessert degustation on Thursday nights make this cosy little place a foodies' “must-try”.

Outside looking in: Cafe Rosamond

In ‘Wikipedia’ style, first a disambiguation: The Café Rosamond is a little café in its own right for most of the time. It’s a small but cosy place, with eclectic furnishings (aren’t all places like this in Fitzroy/Collingwood?).  This blog post however, is specifically about the Dessert Degustation on Thursday evenings held by Pierre Roelofs at the Café Rosamond.

The high expectations of this place came firstly our own excitement about the decadence of a dessert degustation, and secondly from reading other blog posts about this place, and scanning through the biography of the chef, Pierre Roelofs (which reads like a galactic map, scattered with michelin stars). Of note, is his internship at Heston Blumenthal’s “the fat duck” (Heston – a hero of one of The Degusters!).

 

Eclectic interior of Cafe Rosamond. Small, but functional.

The deal is simple: Thursday nights only. You cannot make reservations. It's first in, first seated... And the doors open at 7pm. We arrived at 7:15 (late due to the entree degusting at Panama Dining Room and Bar), and found this little cafe already full (sad face). Understandable though, as the place only seats 25 or so. The very helpful and cheery waitress offered to put us on the wait list (happy face)- for the third sitting (expressionless)- and told us that 9pm was a realistic time to be seated (sad face). No worries, we were so keen for the experience (and the wait really was worth it). In the meantime, we headed back out into the crisp evening to explore Smith St shops.

When the phone call came in that our table was ready we hurried back and found ourselves at a small but functional table, and were promptly offered drinks and an explanation of the evening's courses. Smiles all round.

The brief details of the desserts we degusted are described below, but please realise that the menu is subject to change weekly; so what we actually had may not be available next week.. I guess that's all the more reason to go back again (happy face).

The first course was an iconic dessert in a tube. In this case, black forest cake (BFC) inspired. In dessert degustation terms, this was the appetiser. The tube is a glass cylinder, filled with distinct layers of the BFC - I guess you could call it a deconstructed cake- this seems to be quite trendy, and something I like (I daydream back to the deconstructed cheesecake we degusted at Jacques Reymond a couple of months ago).  So, with all lewd thoughts aside, ones gives a strong suck on the tube, and you are rewarded with a big mouthful of all the elements of this classic cake coming together in your mouth. Joy.

If there's a better way to eat BFC, I haven't found it yet!

Black Forest Cake inspired dessert "tubes".

 

The next dessert course was a really light, fresh dish - inspired by strawberry, yuzu (the Japanese fruit, which also seems to be in fashion these days), creamy soda and vanilla. The smells and tastes made me feel like a child again (creamy soda my soft-drink of choice when my big brothers were drinking beers, because it looked similar).  The photo of this dish looks as sweet and cute as it tasted. There were so many different textures and flavours on the plate, it was hard to take it all in. Individually, each item was good, but they all worked so much better when mixed together, like a symphony of sweetness.

Strawberry, Yuzu, Creamy soda and Vanilla. So light, so crisp, so many flavours and textures.

The next sweet to try was a little bit savoury, incorporating pureed oats (isn’t that porridge?) into a glass, with rhubarb sorbet, passionfruit jelly, yoghurt foam, and raspberry. There was some puffed amaranth in there too. Truly delicious, and I’m not normally a rhubarb fan. Thankfully, chef Pierre has really thought the menu through, and this hint of savoury was a real treat – it accentuated the sweetness of the rhubarb so well. This second dish was a little heavier than the first, this was like the "main meal" of the degustation. One of The Degusters said that if breakfast oats tasted like this, NOBODY would EVER skip breakky!

Rhubarb, yoghurt foam, passionfruit, raspberry and pureed oats.
If breakfast oats tasted like this, nobody would ever miss breakfast!

The last up was the real sweet one. It may seem strange to think that out of 4 desserts, you would label one as a ‘sweet’, but this was the “chocolately course”, and in a very mild way, a little richer than the others.  There were Chocolate, honey, and churron flavours, and hiding underneath all this - Like a shy Chihuahua under the bed in a thunderstorm - was a sponge-like cake soaked in shandy (where shandy=beer + lemonade).  It was a great finale, the dessert of desserts.

The Final Course: Dessert inspired by chocolate, honey, churron and shandy.

 

Nearby, for dinner beforehand, you could check out Panama Dining room, as we did on this occasion (note that the kitchen there opens at 6pm – so you might have to rush to make it out for 7PM), or just around the corner is one of our old Korean favourites, Goshen.

Rating:  Must go back!

Meh                      It’ll Do                   Nom(x3)                              Must go back!

Done and Degusted @ Pierre Roelofs Dessert night @ Café Rosamond…

Black forest cake "Tube"

3-course Dessert Degustation (menu changes weekly)

Drinks: Two espressos were both of consistently good quality (as I’ve mentioned before, an average espresso in Melbourne is really quite good on a quality scale – these were just fine, nothing exceptional, but totally enjoyable), and soy hot chocolate was really good.