Okay, I’m going to preface this short entry with a disclaimer – I did not make the right menu choices at this restaurant. Dessert Story is (understandably) famous for their Taiwanese-style desserts, but we went and had non-dessert menu options which were all uniformly unimpressive. I’ve learnt my lesson for the next time!
The reason I went to Dessert Story for lunch with my father and brother in the first place was because almost every other eatery at Chadstone Shopping Centre had a long queue. The usual Saturday lunch rush saw queues of twenty people or more in the food court, and the queues at the sit-down eateries were even worse. Dessert Story was the only place without a queue, and my ever-impatient father decided that we would eat there.
Dessert Story do a range of “Asian lunch specials” for the meagre price of $6.90 each – or $9.90 if you choose to have a signature Pearl Milk tea with the meal as well. Served in little paper bowls, these meals are heavy on the carbs and light on the advertised main element. Dad’s Japanese Teriyaki Rice was simultaneously dry (chicken) and limp (vegetables) with an overly sweet and cloying teriyaki sauce. As he said, “I’d rather have instant cup noodles than this meal again!”
My Fish Ball Ramen was a similarly unimpressive meal, with bland and plastic-y fish balls and a thick and gluggy soup that actually lacked any significant punch of flavour. The noodles were overdone and much too soft as well.
My brother’s Japanese Katsu Curry with Chicken was strange. The chicken had been cut into stir fry strips, as opposed to being deep-friend in panko crumbs as a cutlet. The curry sauce was also quite tasteless, and would have benefited from using the Golden Curry packet mix from the Japanese supermarket!
The Pearl Milk Tea that came with the meal was almost definitely the highlight of the meal, probably because it’s the closest to what Dessert Story actually specialises in. It’s just a pity that the waitress completely forgot about our order of two pearl milk teas, so they came out almost after we had already completed our meals.
The Pan-Fried Radish Cake was just as disappointing as the main meals, as you can probably tell from the lacklustre photo above. The uninspiring blob of plum sauce on the plate barely served to mask the underdone pasty radish mix.
In hindsight, there’s a reason why Dessert Story wasn’t drawing in the lunchtime crowds. The main meal options are less than inspiring, and I certainly won’t be back any time soon!