Opened in May 2014, The Mandarin Cake Shop not only serves up beautiful cakes with their roasted coffee in a casual patio setting, it also offers a nice variety of homemade gelato, delicious fruit jam, chocolate and macaron. That makes it a really good place to shop for your souvenir to bring back home.
Very few people know this but The Mandarin Cake Shop Taipei also has one of the best pineapple cakes (鳳梨酥) which will make a really nice souvenir.
Their pineapple cakes come in two flavors - original flavor with pineapple and longan (桂圓). As a purist, I definitely recommend going with the original pineapple flavor.
Guifei (貴妃) - It's very easy to get distracted by these adorable cakes. Since I already had two pieces of cake this afternoon, my waistline could only afford me another one right about now. Guifei, I thought was the easy choice because of its elegant presentation (and name!).
This reminded me a little of two of my favorite cakes from Peninsula Boutique - Sakura and Peninsula, both of which were very elegant creations by former Executive Pastry Chef Frank Haasnoot. At this point, I realized my adorable cake suffered a "bruise" around the "waist". That's a careless mistake on my server's part. She should have noticed it when she was doing the packing and swapped it with another piece. Anyways...
The combination of lychee mousse, raspberry osmanthus cream and peanut sponge was pretty refreshing but I was expecting a little more crunch coming from the peanut sponge which unfortunately didn't happen.
It's worth noting that The Mandarin Cake Shop has recently appointed chef Yam Lok Hin (任樂軒) as their new Executive Pastry Chef. Chef Hin began his career as a baker at the Panash Bakery (Japan) and La Rose Noire (Hong Kong), then came along a career-changing opportunity at 3 Michelin starred L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon where he winded up working for 4 years. He moved onto China to work for Michelin starred Sir Elly’s (Shanghai) and then Rosewood Hotel (Beijing) before arriving in Taipei. It will be interesting to see how he brings his wealth of experience from his travel to the table.
Food Rating: 6/10
Price: $$$$
Address: No. 158, Dunhua North Road, Songshan District, Taipei, Taiwan
Closest Metro Station: Nanjing Fuxing
Tel: +886 2-2715-6888
Website: Link
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