If you walk by the cute decorations in Le Dessert Palais's display windows, chances are you'll do a double take. I think I did a triple take, and then I immediately went onto social media to find more pictures of their desserts. The pictures of the desserts on Instagram were amazing, and I started drooling right away. Apparently they even have a decently priced (pretty cheap actually) afternoon tea set, although their tea set is a bit different from the traditional ones served in HK.
After dinner, I walked back to this dessert place to ask them for their hours in the next couple of days and to take a sneak peek at their menu for prices. The woman helping us was not the most friendly - in fact, she was pretty cold, but it didn't deter me from looking at the menu. Their menu is on a tablet, which is fairly convenient since they have real pictures of the items in good photo quality; if the item is sold out or not offered for that day, the picture is removed or there's a "sold out" next to it. You select the items you want by clicking "add to cart" and then return the tablet back to the waitress. It's fairly high-tech and an overall unique experience.
I returned a few days later with my family and we were taken to a small and tight corner for the four of us. There were a ton of tables at the front of the restaurant, so it was a little annoying that we had to squeeze into the uncomfortable table we were at. Looking at the prices, we decided to order just a few items. The individual items are pretty pricey, but they have interesting combo desserts that are much more affordable than ordering a simple cake.
Mille cake was $39 HKD which is roughly $5-$6 USD. Not a bad price, but the mille cake was actually SUPER tiny. It was pretty much like a little biscuit that you could pick up in your hand and munch on. It reminded me of the puff pastries I would buy at Valu-Mart. The cream in the middle was rich and pretty sweet, and the puff pastry was crispy with a slightly sweet taste, but overall it was nothing special. The plate had this special edible salt that added a bit of flavor if you mixed it in with the cake, but it was a disappointment.
Praline chocolate truffle cake was also $39 HKD. This looked really decadent in the pictures - like a chocolate throne cake. And when it came out, it was also ... really small. It was definitely rich and super chocolate-y tasting, but nothing special. There were two slabs of chocolate on the sides that gave the cake some extra texture, but it was not very good.
Chenonceau was $58 HKD (about $8 USD). This definitely was the best dessert out of the three we ordered. There were five little desserts on the plate and looked incredibly unique. Green tea and black sesame ice cream in between three small cakes. On top of the ice cream was a sesame tuile. I thought it was fairly tasty and definitely worth the price. Cakes were soft and refreshing, and the ice cream had good flavor.
There are a ton of other really interesting desserts with unique names, but we didn't order them because the pricing was a bit too high and we were running low on HK currency. I think we wanted to order a soufflé, but they were all sold out for the night.
Ambience is definitely a good place to bring a date. Lots of girls (and older ladies) seem to like coming here and splitting desserts while talking the night away. The look and feel of the dessert place is definitely high class and trendy. I would associate the decorations with the look and feel of Caffe Concerto in LA. The only thing that seems to need some work is the service. For some reason, I really felt like the woman waitress who was snooty the first time we came around continued to give us attitude the night we dined here. Not sure if it's because we're not from HK or because my parents were with me, but just got the vibe that she was rushing us. She gave us the check before we had asked for it when there were tables who had finished eating and were just talking.
tl;dr - Order their more unique and original desserts. Don't order the simple ones that are in their display cases - definitely a letdown. Atmosphere was super nice, but I felt the service was truly lacking. read more