GE Flavor (Shenzhen, CHINA) ★★★★☆

GE BAKE is a highly regarded Japanese-style soufflé pancake and brunch spot in Shenzhen, and it’s gained solid momentum over the past few years. Now that they’ve built a loyal fanbase for their signature soufflé and western brunch items, it’s time to expand.

Enter GE Flavor — a brand new all-day-menu restaurant focused on comfort food, from salads and pasta to more classic, shareable plates.

Naturally, for their first location, they’ve chosen MixC World (萬象天地).

It was 3pm in the afternoon and the place was absolutely buzzing. Why am I not surprised?

Beef and fig salad with Balsamic glaze (牛肉無花果黑醋沙律) (¥78) — The beef fillet was really tender. I thought the fresh pink fig, corn, broad beans and balsamic dressing did a great job cutting through the richness.

Grilled ox tongue with sancho and scallion (山椒葱絲烤牛舌) (¥78) — The ox tongue had that melt-in-your-mouth texture, and it worked wonderfully with the extra heat from the sancho pepper (花山椒) aioli.

Chestnut Mont Blanc (栗子蒙布朗提拉米蘇) (¥56) — The reason why we were here in the first place.

I saw this on social media last week. In the clip, the server uses a special handheld squeezer to spray chestnut vermicelli all over the sponge cake — essentially what they call a tiramisu on the menu. Unfortunately for us, the spraying of chestnut was already done in the kitchen so we could only see the finished product.

The chestnut vermicelli itself was fine although it definitely wasn’t the creamy Tanba chestnut (丹波栗) from Japan. That said, it wasn’t the chestnut that bothered me. What really threw me off was the sponge cake at the bottom, which came with crushed nuts and dried fruit.

That was just weird to me. When was the last time you had fruit inside a tiramisu?

Food Rating: 5.7/10

Price: ¥¥¥

Address: G/F Tower C, China Resources Land Tower, No. 9668 Shennan Road, Nanshan, Shenzhen, China

深圳市南山区深南大道9668号华润置地大厦C座

Closest Metro Station: Hi-Tech Park (高新园)

Tel: +86 18026962030

Opening Hours: 9:00am - 10:00pm (Mon - Thu), 9:00am - 10:30pm (Fri - Sun)

Map: https://j.map.baidu.com/14/H8pM