Pâtisserie Tony Wong

Normally I am not a big fan of dessert as I do not have a sweet tooth (or maybe I already have too much sugar in my system) Anyways, I have heard quite a lot from my friends about Patisserie Tony Wong and as I was meeting up with my friends one day in Shatin, I was surprised to see it has a new branch here so I believed it was a sign that we just had to try it.
Before I start, let me briefly introduce this place. The owner, Tony Wong, has years of pastry making experience and has made himself this brand name with his creativity, originality of the pastry and the finest pastry making. As one always says, you cannot make something work without having a passion for it. And I am pretty confident to say he certainly does have huge enthusiasm in it. As the shop in Shatin was newly opened, there were quite a lot of people and we had to line up for a table inside. Luckily, turned out some of them were ordering take-​away so it did not take long for us to go inside. As we walked inside, it was like a western café and the décor was quite pleasing to the eyes and very relaxing for people to hang out in a hectic afternoon.
As the picture shown, I did not order anything fancy like the rose pedal cake or something like that… as I believe the most difficult to make dessert is the basic ones. Therefore, I got this one and I loved it. It was very smooth and the flavor was of perfect amount. It was not too sugary for me and it blended so well overall. Since I think it has passed the test, next time I will definitely try something bolder and braver and see how it goes. (However it was slightly over-​priced but I guess it is not easy to find a fine pastry place without paying that much nowadays in Hong Kong…)

My mother and I were walking around in New Town Plaza when we noticed that a Tony Wong Café had newly opened. We’d bought cake from their Kowloon City branch before, but only once or twice because while they are very good, their cakes are quite expensive at $ 50 a piece. But since we were kind of hungry around that time and were curious to try the new café, we decided to have tea there. We ordered a ‘Mango Fourplay’ (clever name, if I might add!), which included four mini mango desserts, and a cake set for which we chose the Hazelnut and Chocolate Crunchy Cake. The cake set came with a drink (we got a hot latte) and we decided to add an extra hot latte as well.
I was honestly quite disappointed with the ‘Mango Fourplay’. I had pretty high expectations for it because most of the people in the café had ordered that, and it just looks so pretty! The set came with a mango Napoleon, mango sorbet, mango panna cotta and an ‘espuma soup’. Of the four, I only liked the napoleon — the pastry had a nice loose-​ish, crunchy texture and the mango flavor was quite strong. I was 50 – 50 on the panna cotta because it was just really sweet and the mango tasted kind of artificial. The other two were pretty bad, in my opinion. The mango sorbet was quite watery and didn’t really taste like sorbet. The ‘espuma soup’ was just weird to me. It wasn’t really ‘soup’ so much as it was mango-​flavored foam… I didn’t like it at all. Fortunately, the hazelnut and chocolate cake was a redeeming factor. The flavors were very rich and the cake was very soft and creamy. The latte was also not bad but could be served hotter.
Overall, I don’t know if I’ll be coming here again. The ‘Mango Fourplay’ was disappointing and though the cake was good, at $ 68 for the set that’s still expensive (although it’s much cheaper than buying the cake on its own, which would set you back $ 50!). The seating was also not particularly comfortable and the café was a little too loud for my liking.