Malaysia – Shangri-La Hotel – Lemon Garden Cafe – Desserts

Restaurant: Lemon Garden Cafe
Cuisine: International/Seafood/Buffet
Last visited: April 23, 2010
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Address: Inside Shangri-La Hotel
11 Jalan Sultan Ismail
50250 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
T: (603) 2032 2388
Price Range: $30-50CAD – RM 90-150

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 5.5
Service: 4
Ambiance: 5
Overall: 5.5
Additional comments:

• Gourmet buffet – the savoury buffet
• International cuisines
• Chinese/Malaysian/Indian/Japanese/Italian/American
• Not authentic, but contemporary
• Amazing set up
• Caviar station
• Fresh Blue Fin Tuna sashimi
• Gourmet desserts/dessert station
• Bakery attached
• Private dining room available
• Smart Casual
• Open kitchens
• Live cooking
• 6am-1am daily
  

**Recommendations: To come here if you travel to Malaysia!

I posted on the savoury portion of the Lemon Garden Cafe at the Shangi-La hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia yesterday – see here. However I just had to make a separate post to highlight the most amazing dessert buffet ever! Well it was one of the most amazing ones I’ve seen. Get ready to drool at your screen… or at least have some chocolate within reach.

After this gourmet buffet I STILL went for dinner #2 at Devi’s Corner!

This is outside the Lemon Garden Cafe at the Shangri-La hotel. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

This is the bakery and dessert take out restaurant that is attached to the Lemon Garden Cafe. It’s part of the dessert buffet, but you can also order whole cakes and candies to go.

I was literally a kid in the candy store! That lollipop was so heavy… I could lift weights with it. It was about $20CAD and $20 000CAD in cavities.

The Lemon Garden – savoury post.

On the table:

Tada!!!!! OMG I know right?!?! WOW!!! This is the dessert buffet inside the Lemon Garden Cafe. This photo is even before I started eating! The dessert station just caught my eye and it was like a drug. I didn’t start on it first but I certainly left enough room for it!

I honestly didn’t know where to start… I tried every single thing you see though. I left 30% of my savoury appetite + my separate stomach for desserts just for this gourmet, fine dining quality, beautifully presented dessert buffet!

I don’t even know what to highlight. I just couldn’t stop taking photos… and it’s so easy when the subject is so beautiful. The spoons in the front are chocolate creme caramel and blueberry puree desserts. These aren’t “whatever” buffet desserts, these were professional pastry chef desserts!

Espresso, white and milk chocolate mousse cups, lemon tarts with strawberries, mango panna cotta and lemon meringue tarts with fresh fruit. There was everything!

This was a chocolate mousse with whipped coconut cream, caramel and fresh mangoes. It actually tasted better than it looked and it looks pretty damn good.

These are crispy meringue cups with pastry cream and fresh fruit.

I don’t even remember what this is anymore but it was a super moist cake that was soaked in a syrup. I remember it being sweet and slightly tangy.

This was one of my favourite desserts there. For me it was the best. It was a chocolate cup filled with a light white chocolate pastry cream. It sat on this soft basked crispy meringue like cookie. It wasn’t meringue though – it was almost like a Parisian macaron with an almond flavour.  It was topped with raspberry coulis and these crispy crunchy raspberry chocolate pearls.

The ice cendol or ice kacang station. Ice cendol is a traditional and popular Malaysian dessert. It’s shaved ice served with red beans, sweet corn and green jellies topped with brown sugar syrup and coconut milk. I tried one from Madam Kwan’s Restaurant in Malaysia, but the ice cendol at Lemon Garden Cafe was a customized ice cendol bar.

The toppings in the front are for ice cream sundaes and the toppings in the back row are the cendol toppings.

They also offered traditional Malaysian desserts which I didn’t really like at all. It was various rice cakes and layered jello mostly made from sugar and coconut milk and some various fruits. I’m not a fan of Asian desserts in general though.

The Malaysian jello is almost like any Asian jello – it’s made from agar agar (gelatin powder from red algae) and it creates a gelatin-like jello, very stiff and a bit hard.

The round donut balls you see on the left (2nd left row) – those are not good. It was like savoury deep fried dough balls stuffed with pork floss or fish floss (shredded jerky). It should have been with the savoury buffet items!

These are the Italian and French desserts. Chocolate souffles with molten chocolate lava in the middle with creme anglaise and raspberry coulis. They also had made in house Italian cookies and fig bars.

There’s more! The other component to this dessert buffet is the cake section! They have whole cakes, flans, tarts etc.

This was pavlova.

Chocolate mousse pyramid cake… have no idea how it stood up.

These were another one of my favourite desserts. Surprisingly! I know they don’t look exciting. But they were. They were little mini pound cakes with pistachio nut crumbs on top, but they were so moist and not too sweet. It was almost Middle Eastern-ish.

Assorted dessert martini glasses filled with panna cottas and fluffy creamy mousses.

This was a green tea and chocolate panna cotta/mousse in a martini glass. Yum!

Excuse the black heels again… I was packing light!

The fondue!!!! This is the chocolate fondue station! YES!!!! You should be able to feel my giddiness through your computer screen!! I am a happy girl.

Fresh fruit skewers, lady fingers, Madeleines, marshmallows, pound cakes, brownies, and all sorts of cookies – they had every possible thing to dip into these decadent chocolate fountains.

This was a white chocolate fondue. I thought it was mango or orange chocolate, but it’s not. It was just dyed orange for presentation.

Only in Malaysia will I see skewers of fresh dragon fruit for the chocolate fondue.

Cranberry and pistachio biscotti for the fondue.

This was the fruit station which probably looks just boring right now. Although it wasn’t! I mean fresh papaya, starfruit, jack fruit and pineapple (just to name a few). Malaysia is a tropical country so these fruits are really best here.

This is fresh jack fruit. It’s sweet and floral and tastes like Juicy Fruit chewing gum. It’s the texture of mango or durian, but doesn’t taste like it at all. It has tons of flavour but it’s not pungent either.

One of my 6 dessert plates. I shared some of them, but thank god they’re bite sized otherwise there would be so much waste.

The only way I could sample every cake…lol. Oh and that’s a baclava in the centre.

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