Cobo House by 2am: Dessert Bar (Hong Kong) ★★★★☆

Shek Tong Tsui has just gotten a lot more exciting with the recent opening of Artisan Room and Cobo House. Cobo House, the newest addition to the district's food scene, is an all-day dining restaurant helmed by Janice Wong, an award-winning pastry chef from 2am Dessert Bar in Singapore. Chef Janice's shot to fame can largely be attributed to her consecutive "Asia’s Best Pastry Chef awards" (2013 and 2014) at Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants and since then, she has never looked back.



Trained under some of the best (ie. Grant Achatz, Pierre Hermé etc.) in the business certainly didn't hurt her stock and Cobo House by 2am: Dessert Bar marked her first overseas opening outside Singapore.



And what would a dessert bar be without a sleek, modern and cool counter area?



All the drinks from the drink menu are available with the tip of my finger.



They have this really interesting portfolio of dessert-inspired tea that includes some funky tea flavors such as creme brulee and chocolate mint truffle but I decided to go with this one, Toffee Popcorn ($60). Unfortunately, I couldn't exactly tell whether it's toffee and/or popcorn flavors in there.



The ball gets rolling with one of Chef Janice's signature desserts, Tsujirihei Green Tea Tart ($108) beautifully decorated with Kyoto green tea, jasmine rice sherbet and persimmon jelly.



Matcha lovers will be delighted with this one featuring silky green tea ganache and lovely jasmine rice sherbet.



Less successful was the other house specialty, Cassis Plum ($138), a combo of cassis bombe, elderflower yoghurt foam, choya granita and yuzu pearls.



A little too much acidity was the culprit here and not enough sweetness to balance it out.



Finally, I went with their Red Miso Caramel ($108) to close things out. On paper they got something quite special in this marriage between miso and caramel and the result was pretty compelling. Mustard yuzu meringue, miso foam and miso yuzu liquid nitrogen ice-cream are the three key components here resulting in the contrasting texture and temperature. Definitely worth the try.



I was ready to ask for the bill but a last-minute peek into the snack menu changed my mind. At the end, I decided to sample one snack before I go and Kimchi fried chicken ($88) was the easy choice for a koreaboo like me.



Kimchi marinated chicken was deep fried to perfection before they wrapped thing up with a kimchi gel, wasabi mayo and home grown wasabi leaf atop. The combination of flavors was excellent; coupled that with the crispy batter and we got here a very nice dish!



I am really looking forward to seeing their full blown savory food menu served at lunch and dinner sometime in early March. Stay tuned.

Food Rating: 7/10
Price: $$$
Address: G/F & 1/F, 8-12 South Lane, Shek Tong Tsui, Hong Kong
Closest Metro Station: HKU
Tel: +852 2656-3088
Website: www.cobohouse.com