Adriano Zumbo Patissier | Tru Bru
Funny how your Melbourne explorations increases exponentially when there are visitors from overseas. Fatbee had friends visiting our fine city as part of their pre-honeymoon trip, and one fine Sunday we went out together and explored places that were new to both us locals and visitors alike. It was a bit of a ‘family outing’.
Adriano Zumbo Pâtissier
14 Claremont St
South Yarra, VIC 3141
Website
We first had a massive group brunch at Two Birds One Stone, and then we hopped next door to dessert wonderland. So much bling here, but it’s a pretty mesmerising sort of bling bling.
Zumbo’s desserts have been plastered all over social media with his wacky colourful offerings and I admit that I’ve been viewing all that hype with a healthy amount of skepticism. Especially when I saw they’d started selling boxes Adriano Zumbo Macaron Mix in Coles and that he’d been collaborating with Tim Tam to create new flavours.
But I’ll have to say that the vibrant display of tongue-in-cheek named desserts such as Wassup-Bi (wasabi) made me smile and piqued my curiosity significantly once I finally stepped into his shiny domain.
the annoying orange cake $9
flourless chocolate cake, orange caramel, olive sable, chocolate & clove mousse, orange & white chocolate jam
There were six of us visiting that day but tables were rare, so we squeezed ourselves into three chairs and shared three desserts like the little munchkins that we were.
First up, a beautifully made orange-themed cake that looked almost too pretty to eat…
tarte aux fruits de la passion $6
… and next was a perky-red passionfruit tart that I’d accidentally ordered as “one Ladybird, please!”. It made the guy serving me laugh.
Both desserts were pretty awesome, with the orange coming in as my favourite because it looked and tasted so unique and mousse-like with a hint of cloves. I’m normally not a fan jaffa flavours, but somehow it worked here, plus the orange jam in the centre had a nice counterpoint of bitterness of rind in it.
The passionfruit tart was enjoyably smooth and tangy too.
secret carrot’s business $9
carrot cake, baked cheesecake, cream cheese mousse, semi dried carrots, caramelised pecans
Our final selection was themed around carrots. I loved how veggie patch-like the dessert looked.
My companions enjoyed this dessert the most, it was once again experimental without being ‘too much’ and the base tasted a lot like well made gingerbread.
I used to think that Adriano Zumbo is a lot of hype with potentially little substance, especially since my previous tastings of his wacky flavoured macarons did not rock my boat that much. However, his experimental desserts were actually very memorable, fun and balanced. I’ll be coming back.
Tru Bru
3/9 Yarra St
South Yarra, VIC 3141
03 9826 6878
Website
Reason why we only shared three desserts was because we’d actually visited Luxbite immediately after and shared another three sweets. After that, with bellies full of sweetness, we proceeded to explore another unique South Yarra spot that Jernel recommended – a beer and cider concept store that’s just a minute’s walk from Zumbo.
Stepping in, the placed looked almost like an alchemy lab rather than a place for beers, with brilliant white machines that would suck the air out of the bottles before tapping in your choice of beer or cider. Creating that vacuum prevents oxidation of your drink, keeping its freshness and flavour for longer despite being a draught from a tap.
Tap beers tends to taste better, but normally draught needs to be drunk immediately as they’d lose their foam. But here, they’ve created the concept such that you can have ‘draught-to-go’, and the unopened bottle keeps for weeks.
You first make an initial size purchase choice of a horse-themed amber bottle, varying from 450ml ‘whistlers’, 950ml ‘squealers’ and 1.89L ‘growlers’. You can keep that bottle and bring it back for future refills.
You’re allowed to have tastings of what’s on offer, so we eagerly tried all three draught ciders on offer that day, and picked two types to take home with us.
The flavours were beautiful and priced nicely too, with the Bilpin Pear Cider coming at $12 for 950ml squealers, and Franks Pear & Cherry Cider going at $14.50 for 950ml. I’ll be coming back next time to check out their beer offerings.
Our day did not end here by the way. After enjoying these ciders at Fatbee’s comfy home, we ventured to Kokoro Ramen for dinner. Read about that visit here!