Adriano Zumbo Dessert Train, Pyrmont

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will know who I am talking about when I mention Zumbo’s name. For those who have somehow missed the headlines, Adriano Zumbo is a famous patissier who was catapulted to fame through the popular Masterchef show for his quirky baked creations. After our fancy meal at Black by Ezard which left our wallets quite empty, we somehow still had room in our stomachs for dessert so we decided to go to Zumbo’s at The Star to cap off the night, wandering through the food court before arriving at the Edward Street exit where Zumbo’s is located.

There is a huge open kitchen where the patissiers are busily baking and you can observe them through the big glass windows. The two halves of the store are connected through this kitchen. The first half of the store is their takeaway concept store with whimsical selections of their baked goodies on display in brighly coloured cages. Inside the store itself are the signature macarons (“zumberons”) neatly housed in cute little boxes labeled “break in case of emergency” according to their eccentric flavours.

The other half of the store is the sushi train style dessert bar. Here, desserts zoom past the diners on a conveyor belt into the kitchen where freshly baked desserts are placed on the train to replenish stock. I’ve expressed my love for sushi trains before because they deliver instant food and Adriano Zumbo has ingeniously married the two concepts – delivering instant desserts to the sweet toothed masses. I’m in awe of his innovativeness and can see this unique dessert train idea really take off as more people find out about it.

The only surprise for us is that the dining section of Zumbos is actually quite  small, there are probably only about 15 seats all together and there is no room for the 4 of us to sit together on this Thursday night so we wait for about 15 minutes before we finally sit down. The service is friendly and the waitress helpfully explains that like conventional sushi trains, we can order any desserts we see on the menu which aren’t on the train, which means we can have freshly made-to-order goodies if we want! She also points out that some of the desserts only have a shelf life of around 10 minutes (such as a cake with foam bubbles on top) so everything already on the train is super fresh anyway. There is a colour coded plating system too and the plates are mostly priced around $9.50 or $10.50.

We had already been eyeing off several concoctions we saw in the takeaway concept store and as they came by on the train we quickly picked them up. First to come was the caramel cube cake – perfectly shaped and covered with square flakes of caramel pieces, it was so soft when we dug in with lovely cream mousse inside and orange jelly which gave it an interesting twist.

Caramel – Passionfruit crème, ginger vanilla bavaroise, tonka bean caramel, ginger sable breton, caramel chantilly, caramel sponge $10.50

Our friend also picked up a dark chocolate rectangular log and it had Adriano Zumbo’s name plastered all over the flat top. It was quite sweet, with raspberry flavoured jelly and maybe some soft marshmallow mixed in with the chocolate. Not sure what it was called though.

Raspberry chocolate log $9.50

The macarons are also available in groups of 3 on a plate, so I picked up the one with cola, raspberry salted caramel and pistachio. It would actually be cheaper to buy the macarons at the takeaway store where they are $2.50 per macaron but my brain isn’t completely switched on since I am in sweet sweet sugarland as I bite into the cola macaron. It tastes exactly like cola but without the fizz – very impressive! The raspberry salted caramel sounds strange but in true Zumbo fashion, manages to please our tastebuds with the balance between the sour, tart raspberry cream sandwiched between the salted caramel which itself mixes sweet and salty flavours. The pistachio by contrast was a bit ordinary, but was appropriately nutty and a decent macaron nonetheless.

Macaron plate $9.50

Our last indulgence of the night is a raspberry mousse tart, the gorgeous purple whipped mousse attracted our attention and we were rewarded with more sour goodness from the raspberry within the tart, light and fluffy mousse on top of a crumbly tart base.

Raspberry mousse tart, $10.50

The whole fitout of Zumbo’s is pastel coloured and there is even macaron wallpaper! The whole place gives off a bit of a Willy Wonka-esque vibe which is unparalleled in Sydney. This is one savvy patissier who knows exactly what the masses want from their desserts: an experience in adventurous flavours we have never seen combined before and knows that we are willing to pay a premium to get our fix from him all over Sydney from the original Balmain to North Strathfield (at Cheeky Chocolate) and now Pyrmont too. Count me in as a fangirl.

Adriano Zumbo Dessert Train
Shop 1, Cafe Court
The Star (Entry Via Edward St)
80 Pyrmont st
Pyrmont, NSW 2009

Adriano Zumbo Pâtissier on Urbanspoon

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