Mezza 4 1/2

The back of the dessert menu fea­tures Pierre Hermé scratch­ing his head won­der­ing: “Hmmm, foie gras with creme brulee? I dunno… think they might go for it?”

We had a good din­ner in the com­pany of good friends on Thurs­day at the Grand Hyatt’s Mezza9 despite some dis­ap­point­ments which I am com­pelled to talk about.

Because I care about the state of the ser­vice indus­try in Singapore.

We were look­ing for­ward to sam­pling the desserts of a cel­e­brated chef, Pierre Hermé, who was in town for the World Gourmet Sum­mit.

After order­ing just enough entrees from the main menu so as to save space for dessert, we stopped a very busy look­ing wait­ress and asked to order a por­tion of each dessert in the dessert menu.

She didn’t explain what each of the desserts were, which I thought was ok, because the menu did describe them in some detail. But when the desserts were served, the serv­ing staff did not explain which dessert was which.

Which I still thought was ok, because then we’d have a bit of fun fig­ur­ing out which dessert was which. We had to do this also because the pho­tos on the dessert menu didn’t match the text. (We fig­ured this out because we knew what a mac­a­roon looked like).

But then, and only then, did the wait­ing staff tell us that the dessert we were all most look­ing for­ward to — the creme brulee with foie gras — had been sold out.

This is not on, fel­las. You could’ve told us ear­lier. We could’ve ordered some­thing else to quell our ris­ing dis­ap­point­ment. We could’ve rioted and chucked you in your wood-fired oven. Lucky thing some of the other desserts were quite good. Pierre Hermé saved your col­lec­tive skins, some of which, by the way, are either due for a good scrub or there’s some­thing wrong with your laun­dry contractor’s deter­gent. Some of the aroma of which we caught sev­eral whiffs are def­i­nitely not from the yak­i­tori grill.

Get it together, restau­rant man­ager. Mezza 4 1/2.

Desserts minus one

rev­e­la­tion: puff pas­try with tomato, mas­car­pone, pieces of black olives, olive oil and straw­berry compote

My favourite: tarte mogador: short­crust pas­try, pas­sion­fruit and milk choco­late ganache, roasted pineap­ple and flour­less choco­late cake.

Mezza9
Grand Hyatt Sin­ga­pore
10 Scotts Road,
Sin­ga­pore 228211 (map)
Tel: +65 6738 1234