Picture this. You’ve just gobbled up the last savoury morsel of a mammoth, multi-course Cantonese-Sichuan meal. Minutes later, a server places on to your table a plate laden with what looks like a couple of smooth, fist-sized, grey pebbles — the kind you’d find in a Zen garden. And they are just that. Well, at least some of them are. The others? Edible doppelgänger that look and feel just like the real deal.
Cottoning on to the latest trend of ‘trompe-l’œil’ (French for “deceive the eye”) desserts, Zen is a dish like no other, where both real and faux pebbles are placed together to playfully confuse the diner.
Only when you run your knife through a fake pebble — that is, after making several failed attempts with a few real ones — do you see its creamy, non-petrified interior!
Conceived by dessert chef Solanki Roy and available at Mumbai’s Typhoon Shelter restaurant, this is one wacky creation. Inspired by her stint at the über-experimental Gaggan, Bangkok, Chef Roy has drawn in traditional flavours and a contemporary approach, with a surprise twist, to present this dessert.
So, here we find a creamy caramel-vanilla mousse that is coated in a melted white chocolate exterior, holding within its core a hazelnut crunch for that all-important contrasting texture. Much like one would do when making marble paper, the white chocolate-covered ‘pebble’ is then quickly dipped in a colour-swirled bath for that desired marbled effect.
The Mumbai-based writer and restaurant reviewer is passionate about food, travel and luxury, not necessarily in that order.