Ryde's Koi Dessert Kitchen will act as a commercial production facility for both the posts, as well as a cooking school and cafe, with eat-in and takeaway options.
Dinner and savoury options will be served only as part of Poernomo's monthly chef's table dinners, capped at 12 customers.
Poernomo runs Koi with his brothers, seasoned hospitality pro Ronald and MasterChef Indonesia judge Arnold, and his mother Ike Malada (Koi stands for Kids of Ike), who he will share the school space with.
Malada will also act as executive chef of the space, with pastry chefs and bakers such as Anna Polyviou, from the Shangri-La Hotel, and Tom Eadie, of Berkelo Bakery, lined up to host guest classes.
If you prefer your sugar without elbow grease, fear not. Koi classics – banana caramel dessert with chocolate, hazelnut, caramel jelly and a caramelised banana and rum mousse, or the coconut mousse with kalamansi citrus, almond sable and white chocolate glaze – will be on offer to eat in with a coffee or to take away.
Oh sure, restaurants appear to offer desserts. But where once it would have been a list of tarts and mille-feuille, of savarins and delices, of things requiring proper pastry work, now there are just unstable creamy things on a plate. It’s an endless parade of panna cottas and half-arsed mousses. The kitchen will throw on a bit of granola or a fragment of meringue to make it look like a dessert, but that doesn’t alter the fact. It’s not. It’s a squirt from an udder, set to a wobble courtesy of a boiled down cow’s foot. It’s a failure of ambition.
It’s everywhere. Most recently I’ve seen it at 108 Garage: sesame ice cream with fragments of meringue or chocolate mousse with artichoke ice cream. At The Other Naughty Piglet it was chocolate mousse or creme caramel. At Box-E in Bristol it was chocolate mousse or panna cotta, which is just creme caramel without the caramel.
