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2011-09-19
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La Maison du Chocolat is moving! (It will move up 2 floors from 22 Sep onwards.)Actually it was the first (and second) time I visited LMDC. Yes the shop front looks luxurious but need not be put off, the staff are in fact quite helpful. Interestingly, the first things that I bought here weren't not exactly chocolates. On a hot afternoon (it's fall already!) the only thing I wanted was an ice cream. And I thought I'd be a fool if I didn't get anything chocolatey at LMDC. So there it was - Dark ch
La Maison du Chocolat is moving! (It will move up 2 floors from 22 Sep onwards.)
Actually it was the first (and second) time I visited LMDC. Yes the shop front looks luxurious but need not be put off, the staff are in fact quite helpful. Interestingly, the first things that I bought here weren't not exactly chocolates. On a hot afternoon (it's fall already!) the only thing I wanted was an ice cream. And I thought I'd be a fool if I didn't get anything chocolatey at LMDC. So there it was - Dark chocolate and Tonka bean.
Hmm...took this on the ferry on Lamma so as a result the photo was blurred...
I had no idea of what Tonka bean, or 零陵香豆 in Chinese, when I bought this ice cream. And on tasting it, it was very smooth and light but melted pretty quickly, the chocolate aroma was intense with a slightly bitter yet acceptable aftertaste (because the sweetness was adequate). There was a slight tinge of vanilla but there was something more to it, like it was more robust. And so I searched Wikipedia and found that the complexity of flavor was contributed by the Tonka bean, which "had been used as a vanilla substitute" and "their fragrance is reminiscent of vanilla, almonds, cinnamon, and cloves". Anyway I'd say it was of superior quality just that the price at $56 a 100 ml pot was pretty steep, so I could only have it once in a long while. But then I couldn't resist the temptation of the
Quatre Quart Citron (Lemon Cake) ($45) displayed at the cashier. Quarte Quart is a French equivalent of the pound cake, meaning equal quantities of the 4 ingredients (flour, sugar, butter and eggs) is used.
In this delightful dainty version, the cake was moist, and lemon zest was blended into the cake, giving it a refreshing touch. The cakes at LMDC are freshly made locally but I could taste France here!Then I read LMDC's Macarons being voted the best in town by a local magazine. That gave me the reason for my second visit. At $23 each, it is probably the most expensive macaron around. But I bought 2: chocolate and pistachio, following the magazine article's recommendation, and they cost $55 coming in a pretty box.
(In retrospect I could well have dumped the box and asked for them to be packed inside a plastic bag to save $9, but anyway...)
The box did give better protection, as I could only believe it to be the case.
The macarons had to sit in the fridge for a couple of hours before I had time to eat them. Yes the shells were very delicate, they crunched open at my first cut but had a little chewiness that was just right. The fillings of all macarons at LMDC are dark chocolate, and they were like super thck - thicker than any other macaron filling I've eaten! Well it didn't matter as long as it tasted good. The bittersweet dark chocolate filling wasn't "oozing" as described in the article but was still gooey, and sinfully delicious. I preferred the chocolate macaron to the pistachio one as the whole thing was like more "hardcore" chocolatey, but the chocolate filling outpowered the relatively mild flavor of the pistachio macaron shell.
Looking forward to the new shop opening for me to try the "real" chocolates!
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