Impossibly I’ve found a dessert which is actually too sweet even for my sweet tooth. MADD (I think standing for Mango ADDiction) is a dessert/coffee lounge which opened up about seven months ago and its twist is that every dish is inspired by mangoes. I imagine the venue was hoping to capitalise on the health benefits of mango as a fruit … probably overlooking the fact that all the extra sugar that went into all the other bits would outweigh the nutrition! Sigh.

The owners of MADD have tried to make the venue a place for you to hang out in with games such as Connect 4 and Jenga on the tables, jugs of tap water that you can help yourself to, and available electrical points (presumably to plug in laptops etc.) Having said that the shop is not particularly big and any more then about ten people would make the seating area quite crowded. Staff are quite friendly and relaxed (there is no rushing you out of here that’s for sure.)

To help you with your dessert choice the treats are on display in a glass enclosure at the counter. The largest dilemma is choosing which dish you want to deliver your sugar high. LOL. The Siam (mangoes with coconut sticky rice) caught my attention whilst the Crumble (a “healthy” combination of mango cubes, yogurt and honey with crunchy crumble layers) caught Pat’s attention. Both dishes were way too sweet though ironically our mangoes were not at all sweet. Guess I’m spoilt from the ideal of the beautiful tasting mangoes we have available in Oz! Oh, and Pat’s crumble was more crumbs … so an overly dry dish in the end.

From a pricing perspective desserts are about £5-7 which is comparable with desserts in restaurants. The portions are fairly reasonable but I suspect that dropping the price a little bit may entice more customers.

I’m not sure how long MADD is going to survive as a business (tonight there was us and two other people.) Admittedly it’s a Sunday night tonight and perhaps they get a lot more business at breakfast (they serve a selection of breakfast-inspired dishes too and shakes and all that jazz) or during the week. I do like the idea of a dessert lounge (and the Asian-styled offering such as sago and sticky rice) but perhaps expanding on just having mango as the central theme would be somewhere for the business to grow.

Su Yin arranged for a yum cha catch up today with Jonny and myself. We’d set out to go to Royal China since that was conveniently located for her. Unfortunately it was getting renovated – which was news to me and also news to the large number of people who also turned up at the restaurant expecting a yum cha dining feast. Dragon Palace, only a few stations away at Earl’s Court, was a venue I’d been wanting to check out for a while. It’s owned by a friend of Craig’s and came highly recommended. Admittedly he’d gone when both friend was around and it was the regular evening menu (it was a birthday banquet) so slightly different situation to yum cha.

Firstly the pros. Very reasonably priced, fairly modern but still cosy venue, service was efficient.

Then the cons. Probably the only yum cha place I’ve ever been to which gives only three steamed prawn dumplings (rather than four!) and the service was hit and miss depending on which wait-staff you got (yes it was efficient but was it really necessary for one waitress to literally throw one of our dishes on to the table as she rushed by?)

The dim sum itself was neither memorable nor horrible. I do like the fact the venue seems to be a relative unknown and the location, when the district line is working at least, is pretty convenient for me.

Overall, the quest to find another decent yum cha place continues but I would like to come back another time, perhaps when the owner is about.