Dessert Duel: Sweet Desire vs Dolcemente Italia

DOLCEMENTE ITALIA
Bathed in clinical white light, the narrow front section of this new Bandra dessert parlour looks somewhat like a laboratory. Rows of white bottles of fruit- syrup, a stack of white cups, and white containers filled with topping sauces are placed on shelves against a white wall. Under the store’s harsh white light, even their pop-coloured desserts look blanched. The stark retail space leads to a warmly lit seating area with white furniture and conical ceiling lamps. The menu is made up of gelato, brownies, muffins, wafer rolls, wafer sandwiches, fro-yo, and assorted chocolates. Out of the four gelatos (Rs60 per scoop), mango, blueberry cheesecake, chocolate, and cookies, we picked the tart and creamy blueberry cheesecake flavour, which was almost as satisfying as an actual cheesecake, and the decadent dark chocolate flavour, which had us cooing with pleasure. Sadly, the dessert shop hasn’t been too successful in trying to reinvent fro-yo, which is used as the filling for wafer rolls, biscuit sandwiches, and is also spooned into bite-sized cones that are topped with frozen toppings like chocolate, mint and fruit flavoured sauces. Children may take a fancy to these mini frozen treats that are quite messy to eat, but they failed to dazzle us mainly because the sauces tasted synthetic. Our white chocolate-dipped waffle roll (Rs70) with a plain fro-yo filling was soggy and cloying. Skip Dolcemente’s fro-yo treats and get an assorted selection of their chocolates (Rs80 each) instead. Although these weren’t as intensely flavoured as Theobroma’s excellent chocolates, we found a few interesting flavours. Bounty fans should get the coconut caramel, and lovers of Reese’s Pieces will appreciate the similar if not as satisfying peanut butter and jelly chocolate. The heart-shaped strawberry chocolate had a sticky homemade strawberry fudge-like centre, but our favourite, though it was a bit of a dental challenge owing to the generous use of almonds, was their crunchy dark chocolate and almond rock.

SWEET DESIRE
If Barbie owned a patisserie, it would probably look like the bubblegum pink Sweet Desire, the other new dessert shop on Bandra’s 16th Road. Although there is a stack of plastic Nilkamal chairs in the shop, there are no tables, so a take-away order is your best option, if that is, you find something worth taking back at all. Not all the desserts displayed in their counter looked particularly appetising; for instance, the blueberry sauce over the blueberry cheesecake (Rs95) looked congealed, and the mango slices in the mango tart (Rs110) appeared lifeless and discoloured. We dared ourselves to try both. The mango tart had a commendably crumbly crust and a generous layer of not-too-sweet cream, but expectedly, the mango tasted stale. The cheesecake was a disappointment owing to the hardened sauce that literally required scraping. The shells of both the rose and passion fruit macaroons (Rs50 each) were hard and their flavoured creams quite dense. Of the pair, we preferred the fragrant rose one to the unpleasantly sour passion fruit one. Though reassuringly stained with blotches of blueberry jam, our blueberry muffin (Rs60) was dry. With a little less sugar, the L’opera (Rs85), a chocolate-glazed cake concealing layers of coffee syrup-soaked sponge between the ganache, might have made the trip to Sweet Desire somewhat worth our while.

These reviews were conducted anonymously.

LocationDolcemente Italia
Silver Croft
16th Road
Near Khane Khas
Bandra (West)

Sweet Desire
Param Jyot Building
16th Road
Near Mini Punjab
Bandra (West)

PhoneDolcemente Italia: 3378 7662. Sweet Desire: 6525 5454

HoursDolcemente Italia: Daily, 11am to 11.30pm. Sweet Desire: Daily, 10am to 10.30pm.