Who wouldn’t want to make a whole meal of chocolate? Bring it on — as a soup, starter, main course, sorbet, and of course, pure sinful dessert.
Just kidding.
But The Oberoi celebrates chocolate in its many avatars through September through their concept of Chocoartistry. There are six desserts to choose from.
Chef Anurag Barthwal, Pastry Chef, says he was inspired by the Fibonacci numbers where each subsequent number in the series is the sum of the two previous numbers. Mathematics and chocolate??
“The idea is to present chocolate in its purest form and then keep adding on, with each dessert, presenting various temperatures and textures,” smiles Anurag, a Da Vinci Code fan.
You can get high on the fluffy custardy chocolate laced generously with Kahlua. The chocolate-and-Kahlua pot is offset with the rich nutty taste of the accompanying pistachio sable, a French shortbread-like cookie. Each dessert comes with its own contrapunto, which is seemingly a different taste, yet comes together very well with the chocolate in question, making your dessert sweet enough, but not too.
There’s the blood orange sorbet, for instance, served with the flourless chocolate cake. The tanginess of the icy sorbet tangoes with the dense sweetness of the cake. Imagine slicing through a cake that’s all chocolate and eggs, and no flour! Intense, yes. Eggy? Surprisingly no!
Moving on to darker shades of chocolate, the decadent assiette of dark chocolate with its liquid-centre pudding, chocolate marquise and chocolate sorbet takes you dreamily to chocolate heaven.
The warm Belgian chocolate soup is the perfect cuppa to round off a meal. Chocolate at its simplest, warmest, gooey best. Its companion chocolate wanton is a regular wonton filled with…chocolate! It makes for a crunchy bite, and goes down well with all the oozing warmth.
Save the best for last. There’s something about peanut butter and chocolate, and what effect each has to bring out the kid in you. But the combination of the two is something one kills for. So when it’s presented as a tart, indulge! To top it off is the raspberry and chilli sorbet.
So you have some sharp sorbet to ease off the sugar high, and then have some tart to retain the chocolaty-ness in your mouth, and then go back for more sorbet…you get the point?
The desserts, priced at Rs. 425 each, will be available with lunch and dinner, and through the day at two of their all-day restaurants till September 30 at The Oberoi, M.G. Road. Call 25585858.
