Sweet Obsession

Sweet Obsession Cakes & Pastries
2611 W 16th Ave
Vancouver, BC

After our meal at The Irish Heather as part of its Long Table Series (as blogged here), we decided to look for a place for dessert. Unfortunately (?), Jessica, Mark, Sherman and Viv had other previous engagements so that left Mijune, Anita and me. We could have had dessert and The Irish Heather but, let’s face it, we had an excuse to visit somewhere! At first, we were thinking on different places in Downtown/West End but, after some back and forth thoughts, we decided to go to Thomas Haas in Kits. However, when we arrived, we found out it was closing so that left us again with that eternal question… In the spur of the moment, I remembered the first time I met Mijune, where we were in West Side and ended up going to Trafalgar’s Bistro. So, how about Sweet Obsession which happens to be right next to it? Everybody agreed so to Sweet Obsession it was!

As mentioned in my Trafalgar’s post, it seems Sweet Obsession’s clientele is “younger” than that of Trafalgar’s. As for the food, they both have the same menu, the difference is that you pay for the more calm ambiance in Trafalgar’s…. And open tables. When we arrived, there was none open but, fortunately, one group was leaving and we seized that one right away. That did not prevent us (taking turns) from taking pictures of their goodies on display:

Once we were all back to the table, it was a matter of deciding what to order. Since I wasn’t impressed with what I had in my previous visit to Trafalgar’s, I asked Anita and Mijune what they would like to order if they won’t be ordering their selection. After going back and forth, I ended up choosing my own. But, let’s start with Mijune’s and Anita’s.

Mijune’s selection was tiramisu – “layers of Italian sponge, zabaglione, mascarpone cream and espresso“. I wasn’t particularly impressed with this dessert. While it had some coffee taste to it, as a whole, it didn’t feel like tiramisu. It wasn’t moist as some tiramisu I have had in the past. In fact, it felt more like a cake. In fact, had it been called a coffee cake, I would have liked it a bit more. That opinion wasn’t only from our own table; the table next to ours, who observed us taking pictures earlier, ordered it as well and was disappointed too.

Anita’s order, passion fruit flan – “Tangy passion fruit custard in a buttery pastry shell“. Out of the three dessert we ordered, I liked this one the most. The custard was silky, almost silken tofu-like consistency. To make it more interesting, it had a citrus-y taste (not necessarily that of passion fruit) which contrasted that consistency. The shell was a bit crunchier than what I would wanted but, still, it was good.

My order is the Neopolitan cake – “Layers chocolate cake, vanilla butter cream made from Bourbon vanilla beans, whole raspberries and raspberry coulis“. The individual components were average at best; however, the sum of the parts was a complete fail. I did not feel the flavours were complementing each other; instead, some of them overpowered each other. For example, I thought the raspberry muted the chocolate when I had a piece which had both. (And, in turn either the chocolate and/or raspberry muted the butter cream). Mijune thought that might be because I took a piece which had more of one or the other. That might be possible but I do not think it should have happened to that extent.

Similar to what happened in the visit to Trafalgar’s, it was Anita and Mijune who made it. The goodies? It was an utter disappointment. Given I have been to both places and have tasted five different offerings (counting those from Trafalgar’s – since they offer basically the same), I can’t say I can I liked it…

Tagged under: Kitsilano • Pastry • Vancouver • West Side