Tuesday, May 19, 2009

On an (almost) summer's day...


Post Art Fair, we went to the new-ish Vero Chocolate Lounge, hidden on the first floor the Servicemen's Guides Association at Fenwick Pier, better known for its pier-side restaurant, The Quarterdeck Club. (Seriously there were no signs until you get to the miniscule lift)

It must've been like 30 degrees C, and we took a bit of a detour because there weren't pedestrian crossings and we had to find all those confusing overpasses - in short, there was a lot of walking in the humid Hong Kong heat.

The lounge looks great - huge windows overlooking the harbour (though there's a lot of reclamation work going on, sigh), see-through kitchen where you can see the chefs at work, and tables a comfortable distance apart, which meant there weren't many of them. By the time we got there we had the choice of an outdoor table (noooooo!), a park bench lookalike or the white marble bar. We took the latter (marble was nice and cool to lean against haha) and ordered a cold chocolate each. Food-wise there isn't much, except some chocolate tasting platters and muffins.


3 basic layers: 'normal' hot chocolate (still warm if you don't mix it around), topped with slushie-like choc granita, topped again with whipped cream. The raspberry cold chocolate (which I had, right) was really no different from the normal one (left) except for the intensely sour raspberry sprinkles on the top, which cut through the richness nicely. Though the normal cold choc was more fun with popping candy on top, hehe.

A little note about Vero: they've been around for quite a few years and were, as far as I know, the first artisan chocolate makers in Hong Kong. They started off as an online business, selling their collection as well as doing personalised/corporate/bespoke orders. They are now sold in a few physical retail spaces as well, including Lane Crawford, Hong Kong's (arguably hipper) version of Barney's/BG.


Vero's 5th anniversary limited edition chocs - very cut up (forgot to take a pic before, sorry), with flavours by chefs from various high-profile restaurants in Hong Kong, courtesy of my good friend :)

Vero Chocolate Lounge
1/F Servicemen's Guides Association (enter from Fenwick Pier St, go straight in the little door beside the stairs and take the lift on your left, you should see a sign there that says "Vero")
Fenwick Pier, 1 Lung King Street
Wanchai
Hong Kong
+852 2559 5882
closes at 6pm

2 comments:

  1. I wonder is it really good. When I recommend Quarterdeck, just a random thought to ppl (in fact I haven't been there, lol), ppl prefer less sweet, less choco there......

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  2. Vero isn't part of Quarterdeck, they just share the same building (but are in different parts). I think Vero's chocolates are really nice - definitely comparable to all the imports we get in HK! Vero chocs are indeed less sweet - they have a clean, but still distinct cocoa flavour, which I rather like. The cold chocolate I drank wasn't too sweet either - it was quite refreshing actually :D

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