Per recommendations for dessert after dinner at Momofuku Ko, we visited Chikalicious. All I know is this place is busy normally with lines outside the door. My buddy and I visited it on a Thursday night, and to our surprise it wasn’t overly busy at all. In fact we got there right at 9:30 PM. There were 2 seats at the counter right in front of the Chef Chika. Yes, Chika is her name. She’s shy and quiet yet is very friendly. I’m not a dessert person in general, so it should take something really good to wow me.
Food
I don’t drink coffee either on a normal or part normal basis. But being the random person I am, I ordered it anyways. This is the latte that came out. When I do drink coffee, I usually drink it the way it’s served i.e. don’t add in any other additives. If I recall correctly, the little cubes you see in the pictures are brown sugar cubes. I did not add those in, and the coffee was still definitely tasty. It wasn’t as bitter as I would’ve expected, and it came out nice and foamy.
The first thing that came out that was on the house was creme brulee ice cream on top of molasses jelly. This was literally to die for. The molasses jelly reminds me a lot of grass jelly texture-wise. The creme brulee ice cream was delicious. Not too sweet and was complemented by the molasses jelly well. If you sit at the counter, you can watch Chika prepare this. It’s interesting to see how she scoops the ice cream out of her own tub, and molds the ice cream using the heat of the spoon and her hand. The technique used was definitely something worthy to note.
The first dish that we actually ordered was this vanilla ice cream with apple soup and cinnamon biscuits on the side. The apple soup tastes very much like apple sauce puree. The great thing about this was I’m a fan of apple sauce but I hate it when it’s too sweet. This was the exactly opposite. It was sweetened to the right level. To counter that, we have the vanilla ice cream. You can see how Chika used the spoon again to form the scoop and present it as so. The cinnamon biscuits added a nice crunch to top it off. It definitely was a well executed dish that I thought was wonderfully presented and tasted good too.
This is the last dish that we ordered which is their cheesecake bun. This is what they are supposedly known for. At first glance, you’re thinking cheesecake? You’re probably thinking a cheesecake slice off a pie. Nope. This is her version of cheesecake bun, and it’s all homemade. You can see her pull tupperware out with individually wrapped buns that she might have made the prior night. She unwraps the bun slowly from its casing (which appear to be made out of soft paper linen), and slowly places the bun on the little dish you see above. She then pours some type of cream on top of it and serves it to you on top of ice. This was phenomenal. I love it how everything so far tastes homemade. This was no different.
Here we have a pic of the cheesecake bun getting devoured. But what’s interesting in this, is you can see the texture and how much firm hold it has. If you’ve had cheesecake from a regular restaurant, it typically is taken out of the fridge and is relatively firm with a pie crust on the bottom. This one is entirely opposite. The instant you put your spoon into it, it melts around the spoon but leaves everything else in tact. Again, attention to detail is something this place is not short of.
This last dish was on the house. It consisted of a rum ball (right), coconut marshmallow (left), and salted double chocolate (down). The rum ball was flat out the best. I’m a borderline alcoholic, so that might have explained why I thought so. The coconut marshmallow was nothing to write home about. Perhaps it was because I ate the rum ball first. It literally was just a piece of marshmallow with coconut shavings to the outside. The salted double chocolate was also decent, but it didn’t wow my socks off. Again, maybe it’s due to the strength of the rum ball? Either way, we were definitely grateful for this as we weren’t expecting it.
Final Verdict
All in all, my experience at Chikalicious was phenomenal. I am not a fan of desserts in general, but I still went here anyways. The one thing to take out of this is that the desserts here were not over the top sweetened like in LA. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a sweet tooth or maybe I just don’t have a dessert palette. Regardless if I, a non dessert person likes this place, then you, the dessert person, will LOVE this place 🙂
Revisions
- Sep 9, 2018 - Went here again but didn’t take pics. Remembered the panna cotta was good.
- Apr 17, 2012 - Initial revision.