Sweet Treat from Mandarin Oriental

The Mandarin Cake Shop in Mandarin Oriental is famous for their exceptional quality in their cakes, as one will immediately agree after seeing the decorative cake creations resembling LV bags and wedding gowns displayed at the entrance.

Wednesday was a lucky day for me to try some chocolate delicacy from their cake counter, while it was also a sad day too. My boss was leaving the team and so we bought some cakes as farewell after-lunch dessert to thank him for all the teaching and guidance. I guess everything would be fine, even though we knew in our heart that the team would have quite some tough moments in the coming years without a true leader.

This is a food blog and so we are to talk about cakes here instead of "mourning". We bought five cakes and all of them were from the chocolate counter (by the way the shop has some really delicious hot chocolate drinks, which look like chocolate sauce actually, ha). The first cake was black, and in no way did it resemble a chocolate cake. It was a passion-fruit chocolate cake, with layers of chocolate and passion fruit cake inside.

Then it was the chocolate mousse cake and the Sacher cake. The latter one was very good probably because of the crispy layer at the bottom!

Finally here come the chocolate mousse cup and dark chocolate mousse cake.

All of them were not cheap, but the quality was very high. The mousse was very smooth while the sweetness was just right not too much to overwhelm the other tastes.

No departure is happy as a matter of fact, but we hope that the cakes would lessen the bitterness. Maybe my boss is right, as he said, "C'mon I am not dying!" The reason why it is hard to accept is that he was the spirit of the team. We realize that it is not just good work or job nature that unites a team, but the joy and fun we shared over the years. That is why we are so different from other teams in the office.

I wish you all the good luck, my boss. We will meet again, I am sure, in the future!