KOI Dessert Kitchen opened in Ryde during mid-2017 to complement the KOI Dessert Bar in Chippendale.
We had our sights set on a mandarin and pineapple mousse that’s shaped like a mandarin, but that wasn’t to be had on a Saturday evening. Instead, we find this Black Truffle ($20.00), a limited edition with popping candy, coffee mousse, truffle and coffee sponge.
Set in the gold and red chocolate sphere are truffle shavings, sponge and gold popping candy. To be honest, we’re not fans of the truffle shavings. The bite to the papery texture and the intense earthy mushroom notes of the truffle do not mesh well as a component of a dessert.
Beneath the sphere is a coffee and truffle mousse. Here, the truffle notes are more mellow with the richness and bitterness of the coffee cutting through for an enjoyable coffee mousse with a pleasant savoury umami. This is the highlight of the cake with the crisp tart base adding crunch.
Overall, the Black Truffle was an interesting one-off experience. We’d be happy to eat the coffee and truffle mousse again, but not at this price.
And this is the Chocolate Delight, a chocolate mousse with passionfruit curd ($12.00).
The chocolate mousse was smooth with the tangy passionfruit curd cutting through with its refreshingly tangy notes. We’d have appreciated more, as well as more complexity to the cake given that cakes with more complicated flavour profiles and construction at the Dessert Bar went for $9.50.
The Kitchen is not as big as the Bar, but there’s a dedicated area for masterclasses open to the paying public. The one downside is that since the opening of the Kitchen, the cake selection at the Bar has reduced dramatically. Very few of the new cakes are not offered at the Bar, so we found ourselves turning away on multiple occasions before finding the time to visit Ryde some months later. There were new cakes but there were also price hikes.
2022
We dropped by KOI Dessert Kitchen in Ryde to treat ourselves to a few fancy desserts.
This is the Espresso Pannacotta ($18.00) with espresso panna cotta, coffee jelly, and rum anglaise.
The espresso pannacotta was creamy and smooth, melting in the mouth, and delivered the majority of the deeply roasted coffee flavour in the dessert. By contrast, the coffee notes in the coffee jelly were subtle and chiefly added a textural variation along with the cake sponge. The dollop of rum anglaise lent some boozy depth to every other bite, breaking up the coffee flavour without adding bitterness. Overall, this was a very enjoyable and elegant execution of an espresso pannacotta.
And this was the Bali Sunrise ($18.00), with coconut, palm sugar, pandan, dark chocolate and jackfruit.
The dark chocolate shell was wafer-thin, cracking open with a gentle whack with the back of the spoon and giving way to a white interior that has a similar texture to young coconut flesh and delivered a creamy coconut flavour studded with flecks of jackfruit that gave a gentle crispness and sweet tropical twist. Within the centre, the pandan gel was bold in flavour and its fluorescent green colour transformed the initial coconut appearance into something more akin to an alien egg sitting on a pile of ‘dirt’. The ‘dirt’ itself brought an element of savoury crunch that contrasted the smoothness of the sweet interior and gentle bitterness of the dark chocolate, along with the dabs of salivating acidity of the passionfruit gel gluing the petals to the coconut. Overall, this was a very aesthetic and technical dessert executed with incredible attention paid to balancing flavours.
This is the Borahae ($16.00), with French Earl Grey, cassis, umeshu and yuzu. The name is a borahae is a term coined by BTS member, V, during a 2016 concert, and means “I’ll love you till the end of days,” since purple (violet) is the last colour of the rainbow. The phrase combines two Korean words: violet (bora) and I love you (saranghae).
Notes of cassis dominated the flavour profile, first delivering the sweet flavour of the berry in the mousse with its very gentle bergamot notes, and then punctuating with the sharper, more acidic quality in the cassis compote whose chunkiness provided a textural contrast to the smoothness of the mousse. The umeshu came through in the soaked sponge of the base, delivering its signature sweet acidity with a hint of citrus (from the yuzu) and provided an additional dimension to the cassis. The gentle bitterness of the dark chocolate leaves provided a welcome richness that paired well with the berries.
This is the Peach ($16.00), with peach, sudachi and longan.
The white chocolate shell exposed a peach mousse with a gel centre of longan and peach cubes. The peach mousse delivered a subtle peach flavour, with the highlight being the crisp segments of longan providing pops of its signature sweetness, paired with the sweet acidity of the crisp cubes of peach. The presence of the sudachi came through as a delicate yet refreshing acidity in the gel.
This is the Pretty In Pink ($18.00) with blackberry, sudachi, blueberry and lychee.
The blackberry and blueberry mousse was thick with a richly smooth berry flavour and an almost moist sponge texture. Combined with the milk crumb, the mousse had a very creamy mouthfeel. The lychee pearls added literal pops of floral tropical sweetness, while the pink clouds hid a generous sudachi-flavoured gel that celebrated the refreshing mild acidity and restrained bitterness of the citrus fruit.
Finally, this was the White Peach ($16.00), with white peach, French earl grey, raspberry, rose, lychee and almond. N enjoyed the lightness of the cake and the combination of the individually distinguishable elements that gave it a floral citrus quality.
KOI continues to be a reliable candidate for celebration cakes. We’ll be back again.
KOI Dessert Kitchen is located at Shop 3/62-66 Blaxland Rd, Ryde NSW 2112.