[Paris] Dessance (2)

Follow me on FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, TWITTER, & 微博!

Dessance

Add: 74 rue des Archives, 75003
Tel: 01 42 77 23 62
Hours: [Wed-Thu] 2~11pm [Fri-Sat] 12pm~12am [Sun] 12~11pm
Website: www.dessance.fr
Price: [dessert menu] €19~42
Visited on: Sep 2013

Dessance, Paris’ first gastronomic dessert bar, has been open for around 9 months now. My first visit back in January was a rather pleasant experience, and I finally got a chance to go back to see what’s new. In addition to the a la carte options (€19) and the carte blanche sweet menu (€36), there is now also a carte blanche salé/sucré menu (€42), which includes one savory dish followed by four sweet dishes. On the particular day we visited, this menu started with beef carpaccio, roquefort cheese sorbet, and celery root baked in hay and seaweed, a light dish perfect for those who like to pad the stomach with something non-sweet first. 

Drinks are not included in the menu, fyi. Jasmine tea (€6).

First sweet course: green peas, green pea puree, and orange carrot granité. Bright and light, a pleasant combination with a good balance of sweet and savory.

Second sweet course: burrata with mustard leaf sorbet, orange confit, and saffran/mustard leaf powder. The orange confit, though just a small part of this dish, was nicely done – soft and tender but still preserving a tiny bit of crunchy texture. I’m not familiar with mustard leaf as an ingredient and wasn’t quite sure what I was tasting, but the whole ensemble with burrata, orange confit, and saffran was original and lovely. Like the previous dish, this one wasn’t really sweet, but rather a combination of sweet and savory.

Third sweet course: raw and cooked mirabelle with eucalyptus crème brûlée, marjoram granité, and an acidic crumble. This dish, while interesting in terms of unique flavors to explore, wasn’t an enjoyable one for me as I found there to be too many thimgs competing for attention at the same time.

The fourth sweet course came in two different plates, meant to be shared among the table. The first was chocolate vanilla croustillant with bitter caramel cloud, a plate that has been there since the opening of Dessance. There’s no big surprises here, just the classically delicious combination of chocolate, vanilla, and caramel. 

The second plate, baked Alaska, is another dish that’s been there since the beginning of this dessert bar. It’s basically meringue wrapping salted butter caramel and some crunchy bits of cocoa, then torched with a blowtorch on the exterior.

Small mignardises to finish. The popcorn marshmallow was a fun one, though I didn’t quite like the lavender sorbet wrapped in chocolate.

This second visit to Dessance was overall a pleasant experience. Some dishes were a bit too much for me in terms of flavor combination, but Dessance still remains an interesting address to visit for its unusual creations. For a change of the Paris sweet scene, why not.