Laze around in a posh setting nibbling on delicate chocolates at the Bliss Luxe, a new lounge bar dedicated to this sinful sweet
Laze around in a posh setting nibbling on delicate chocolates at the Bliss Luxe, a new lounge bar dedicated to this sinful sweet
How would you imagine a lounge or a caf ufffd dedicated to just chocolates? When I threw around this question to my colleague, who happened to accompany me for a review of the newly opened Bliss Luxe, a chocolate lounge in our city's swankiest mall, she said that it must be a happy and warm place. My colleague associated chocolates and happiness together in a warm haze. But when we stepped into Bliss we had a different sort of an experience. The Lounge was classy yet understated, done up in muted shades of cream and chocolate with hints of gold. This luxury lounge will remind you of those cafes and lounges in international airports where travellers park themselves before catching their connecting flights.
Bliss Luxe
Food: good
Service: attentive
Ambience: plush
What we found very uncomfortable however was the seating. When you are indulging in something as sinful as chocolates, you need to be able to sit back, maybe tuck your legs under you and even have the scope to get messy. But the seating here comprised lounge chairs that were uncomfortable to begin with, plush sofas that made us sink deep into its recesses so that reaching out for our next chocolate became a little impossible.
We decided to ignore the seating and instead focused on the goodies.
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First came along a plate full of chocolates sitting pretty on serving plates. We loved the Chilli Chocolate, a chilli infused dark chocolate in an encasing of milky white chocolate. Other favourites were Rich Dark, a dark chocolate with 70 percent cocoa (as claimed by Bliss) and the Almond Sensation, crunchy roasted almond slivers combined with milk chocolate.
Bliss also offers classic chocolate combinations like hazelnut, raspberry, mint and some desi variations like peanut chiki with chocolate too. All individual chocolate pieces are priced at Rs 40 and with an extra ten bucksu00a0 charged for the sugar free variations. You can even buy larger quantities get them packed into gift boxes. Bliss uses two kinds of chocolates: Couvertere (a kind of chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa butter used for moulding, dipping, coating and glazing) and Compound (used for coating). Belgian chocolate tablets are brought down to a factory in Bangalore where they are melted, infused with essence such as alcohol, nuts or spices, set into moulds after which a surface decoration is done.u00a0
Bliss also offers a series of hot chocolate drinks perked up with spices and other essences. The lounge is still waiting for its liquor license so right now it's only Rum and Baileys Irish cream essence that you might have to do with.
We were recommended the Royal Red Velvet Cake (Rs 129) and the Opera Cake (Rs 129) by the staff. This cake is a French confection with the word Opera written on it. The cake was layered with almond sponge cake soaked up in coffee syrup, ganache and coffee butter cream and covered with a chocolate glaze. The cake was sweet, infact a little too sweet for our taste with strong hints of coffee.
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The Red Velvet cake was however an interesting mix of several kinds of baking elements and chocolate. This layered cake was a floaty concoction of chocolate mousse, hazelnut praline and cr me br ufffdl ufffde all stacked up with a red icing topped with chocolate sauce. This was accompanied by a bit of white chocolate mousse served with a crumble. As we dug into the velvet cake, we tasted bits of sponge cake followed by the mousse, then the crunchy praline layer followed by the smooth cr me br ufffdl ufffde. The white chocolate mousse coupled with the crumble held on to its own as well.u00a0
We would suggest that you have a good look at the dessert bay before homing in on to the cake of your choice because Bliss offers a range of pastries, cakes and mousses. More than the taste we would say that every slice of cake or chocolate is like a work of art here. You might want to admire it for sometime before you take a bite. We would also like Bliss to loosen up a bit from its current high brow avatar even if it is housed in a posh mall. After all chocolate is all about loosening up and having fun, isn't it?u00a0u00a0
At: Bliss Luxe, opposite Louis Vuitton, ground floor, UB City, Vittal Mallya Road
Call: 4121 4925
Chocolates for two: Rs 500
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