Dolcissimo & Pasticceria Papa (03/12/2011)

I'd be meaning to go to Pasticceria Papa (which henceforth I shall refer to as Papa P's) for about a year now after hearing everyone rave on about it, so upon recently purchasing our new Olympus E-PL3 micro four-thirds camera (that's a mouthful [that's what she said]), it was the perfect excuse to go and cross this place off our list.

A short bus ride from the city to Ashfield and a 5 minute walk filled with some uber-pro "street photography" (HAHAHA) from Angie: 

We finally arrived at our destination, upon which Angie asked "So is this Michel's Patisserie?'

The corner of Dalhousie & Ramsay street. I presume all these people walking out are satisfied customers of Papa P's. (Am I making Papa P sound like a notorious brothel owner?)

Anyways, before we indulged ourselves in the delicious treasures that lay waiting behind Papa P's inviting doors, we decided to have a quick bite to eat across the road at Dolcissimo: 

Indeed, as this menu promises, their gelato must be pretty damn good as the picture suggests that the girl on the left would clearly rather give herself away to the boy than share some of Dolcissimo's fine selection of gelato.


I had vaguely remembered also hearing great things about this place about a year ago, so I hyped it up to Angie and told her how great it was.... and then proceeded to nearly shit myself when I read some recent reviews about how this place has really gone downhill with bad service, average food and overly expensive dishes over the recent months. Luckily our experience was not that bad, especially compared to some of the harsh reviews, but that might be because we went during a quiet Saturday afternoon so the customer service was great and we got our food in under 10 minutes. We opted to sit outside because it was a sunny day and we had no problems getting the staff's attention.


So here goes! 

Croccantini - Meringue with roasted almonds & cinammon.
This doesn't taste very meringue-like, more of a dry biscuit with strong cinammon flavouring. This wasn't to my taste as it was a bit too dry like a stale biscuit with too many sharp rocky bits that cut into the insides of my mouth. Would recommend for people who enjoy cinammon flavoured knives.  

 Kind of reminded me of Graveler from Pokemon (If it had no arms)

Tartufi - A hazelnut in the centre of chocolate and hazelnut fudge & rolled in chopped almonds.

This actually tasted very good, the rich chocolate fudge melts in your mouth and the chocolate and hazelnuts blend quite well together. I wonder why this combination works so well...OH WAIT I KNOW, IT'S A FERRERO ROCHER.

I just paid $3 for someone to take the wrapper off a Ferrero Rocher and serve it to me on a plate. Overall still undeniably delicious and a nice little treat for $3.

Sfogliatelle - Shell shaped crispy pastry filled with a mix of ricotta, semolina and citrus

No idea how you pronounce this, but this was probably the most disappointing dish of the day. Soggy uncrispy pastry outside filled with a confusing mix of filling, supposedly made of ricotta, semolina and citrus but I swear all I could taste was cinammon....In fact the cinammon taste overpowered the entire dish and I'm sure it wasn't from the Graveler dish earlier because there was quite some time between the 3 dishes with plenty of water drinking. Too much powder on top which blew all over my face when I took a small careful bite. Made me look like a coke addict. The inside was frozen so even when I jabbed my fork in, it was like stabbing a very strong man's pectoral muscle with a plastic knife.

We ended up taking 1 bite of this dessert and leaving it. I made a deal with Angie that if this cost more than $5 then I would be Asian and finish it but it ended up being $3.60 so we left the whole thing behind.

Thinking we were about to walk away with a very disappointing experience..Then came the main pasta dish! 

Farfalle Al Salmone - Short butterfly shaped pasta, fresh salmon,shallots,extra virgin olive oil, with a dash of brandy in a tomato and cream sauce

Luckily this dish saved the day and made it worthwhile visitting Dolcissimo. The pasta was cooked just right, not thick and mushy, but still had substance and great chewy texture. These little gems were all shaped like butterflies which was quite a nice touch. (No homo) The sauce was plentiful but still light and didn't overpower the dish at all. One of my favourite things about this dish was that they gave you a SHITLOAD of salmon. They really didn't hold back. This was a very filling dish and worth the $26 in my opinion.

This dish deserves a special mention

When this dish was served to us, I immediately prompted Angie to take a photo of it and she didn't want to and I was all like "Don't be noob! You have to be unbiased with food blogging and take a photo of all the dishes even if they don't look appealing" Then she replied "This is cheese for the pasta." 

Well f*** me.


Total for all these dishes was $35 so overall, quite a cheap experience (especially as the Main dish was $26 so all the other desserts were about $3 each) Would probably return for the pasta mains but their desserts were a little underwhelming.


Now, onwards onto the second part of the day!

It really feels like Christmas now as soon as you step inside this wonderous labrynth of cakes, pastries, gelato, sweets and candies. The queue goes all the way outside the store and well justified. The staff were all friendly and efficient and the queue moved fast, we only waited about 5 minutes before we were served. We bought some takeaway dessert and also ordered a coffee & cake to eat in. The atmosphere was comfortable and warm inside, the only complaint was we had a crying baby behind us, so I would recommend you request for the non-crying baby section.

Here it is! The legendary ricotta cheesecake from Papa P's! This was by far the highlight of the day, one of the best cheesecake slices I have ever had. The ricotta and cheese was so rich and pleasantly sweet. At the same time the cream was very frothy, light and complimented the cake perfectly. The bread component of the cake was soft and moist. This was pretty much sex in the mouth. OH GOD, SO F***ING MOIST. Anyways, this would probably be a must for anyone visitting Papa P's. For only $5 as well....

Coffee was quite terrible according to my reliable source, Angie who has 10 years+ barista training. But hey, fair enough, you don't go to Papa P's for coffee, that's like going to a hooker and also expecting her to be good at juggling.

Now at this point I'm going to point out that most of the things we bought from this store was for takeaway and when we finished devouring all the delicious things, we stopped, looked at eachother and thought, wait a minute, did we take a photo of all that? F***.

So I'll just 'borrow' some stock photos and we can pretend that we took them from the store.

Angie's favourite was the chocolate & strawberry macarons and I enjoyed the chocolate & passionfruit macarons. The passionfruit macaron had real seeds inside so the flavour wasn't artificial at all like some fruit flavoured macarons. Not too sweet either and you didn't feel sick after eating 5 which was always a bonus! (We bought 1 of each flavour) $2 each, which is quite a reasonable price to pay as they quality was still quite high. (Not as good as Lindt macarons though, but its nearly half the price)

The cannoli is also a must-purchase along with the ricotta cheesecake, there's just something very addictive about the cream they use, and we bought 1 of each flavour (ricotta, chocholate & vanilla). Each one had their own distinct flavour. To give you an idea of how good it was, we left it overnight in the takeaway box, but the cream still tasted as fresh as if it was just made. Obviously the pastry lost some of its crispness but still no complaints from me. I can only hope to go back and try this out freshly made. $1.50 for the mini cannoli's in a cute takeaway box perfect for a christmas gift.


Overall, a fun day of sampling for only $50


Dolcissimo
Location: 96-98 Ramsay St  Haberfield
Website: http://www.dolcissimo.com.au/
Opening Hours:
They don't seem to advertise their opening hours...

Pasticceria Papa
Location: 145 Ramsay St, Haberfield. (Corner of Dalhousie & Ramsay St)
Website: http://www.pasticceriapapa.com.au/main.html
Opening Hours:
Monday to Friday - 8am to 6pm
Saturday - 7:30am to 5pm
Sunday - 7:30am to 1pm