If the Stray Butterfly was my most memorable dessert of 2011, two more we enjoyed earlier at L'Effervescence were close behind.
From the lunch menu, this was called the "Lighter than air Mont Blanc". Though we began referring to it later just as the meringue snowball...
I love that form, somehow reminiscent of a swan with its neck curled under its wing, and I love the monochrome white-against-white look...
And I very much enjoyed the action of breaking open that meringue casing to reveal the filling: a scoop of caramel ice cream with crisp flakes of almond, all on a base of praline cream. Simple but remarkable.
And this was the lunchtime version of the "Papillon qui cherche" (as it was explained to us, the "Stray butterfly" is apparently searching for its garden)...
Just look at the translucent delicacy of the "butterfly" — here perched on a scoop of home-made ice cream — and that sliver of apple covering the colorful "garden" at the back:
This is what was underneath: the base was a tranche of cooked apple, aromatic with cardamom; scattered on top of that, cubes of crisp apple and soft jelly of Jack Rose (a calvados-brandy-grenadine cocktail), and in the middle a liquid caramel enclosed in a soft membrane. The flowers are begonias.
Both the above came as part of the two ¥4,800 lunch menus, which really are outstanding value. Bravo!
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