March 23, 2007: Chillipadi II

Update 27/1/2019: Chillipadi is permanently closed.

Between cocktails at Double Happiness and dinner at the Little Malaysia Restaurant, we were having quite the eastern-themed night with Tracy and Lee. As I drained my beer and the waiters neglected our table, I wondered vaguely if there was somewhere else we could show Tracy and Lee before heading home. Chillipadi came to mind almost immediately: I made no secret of ogling their dessert cabinet on our previous visit and I was pretty sure Tracy would like seeing (and sampling!) it too. Best of all, it was right on the way to the newcomers' tram stop.

The cabinet was at least as well-stocked as my last visit - green tea tiramisu, choc-caramel tiramisu, oreo cheesecake, what appeared to be chocolate-chilli cupcakes, and a lone tall piece of some kind of chocolatey cake were all on offer and passed over. Instead Lee relished a triple-layered chocolate mousse served in a large martini glass ($8 and not pictured, unfortunately). He was kind enough to offer the rest of us a taste each, and it was great. Tracy picked out the peach and vanilla panna cotta (pictured below). It had me most intrigued on my previous visit, partly because of its lurid fruity top layer but mostly because it's contained in a conical glass which is then balanced in a round glass. I'm not a big fan of gelatinous foods but I did like this - it's more creamy than rubbery.

The final dessert on offer was my choc-mint cheesecake. As each of us took a spoon in turn, we paused for a moment and could only utter '...weird'. The neat piping had me assuming that it would be soft, yet it took quite some force to dig out a bite. This had me guessing that the cream cheese must have set in the very cold display cabinet. Nope! It was barely below room temperature, and its flavour didn't even hint at a cheesy tang - just faintly sweet and minty. What is this stuff? It wasn't quite marshmallowy, but it left me suspicious that it was a lot more processed than I'd care to know about. What you can't see from the picture above is that the glass tapers to a smaller section, densely packed with a chocolate biscuit base. It's pretty tasty, but the cocktail glass makes it difficult to enjoy the filling and the base in a single mouthful. Oh, and the mystery spheres on top are Mint Slice Balls, in case you were wondering!

As you might have noticed in the pictures, all the desserts are served with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream - it was melty and pleasant, but not really necessary with the cheesecake or pannacotta in my opinion. The wonders of the Chillipadi dessert cabinet weren't uniformly wonderful, but I'm glad that we gave them a go. It's more likely that I'll return for the chips!

(You can read about our last visit to Chillipadi here, or more musings about the dessert cabinet here.)