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.