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On the Menu | Hong Kong restaurant Otera’s impressive dessert tasting experience highlights underappreciated ingredients

  • A new dessert tasting experience at Otera in Hong Kong’s North Point is a masterclass in creativity – nothing like the in-your-face creations seen on TikTok
  • Founder and pastry chef Joanna Yuen has created a menu that highlights unexpected and underrated ingredients, from herbal plants to fruits

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A new dessert tasting experience at the zen-like Otera in Hong Kong with pastry chef Joanna Yuen takes participants through a slow-paced culinary experience. Photo: Joanna Yuen

I have long felt that the TikTokification of food has created a space for excess and indulgence on another level, and it is not one that I wish to spend too long in.

Content creators regularly pump out viral videos of loud, in-your-face desserts, with rich rivulets of cream and custard oozing out from every orifice, while Frankenstein-style baked goods such as cookie croissants and flan cupcakes are blowing up on social media.

Food and travel vloggers constantly post “must try” this and that, saturating our feeds with the same Instagrammable cakes and pastries from Seoul to New York.

And while I love the over-the-top, fast-paced Instagram reels of insanely talented pastry chefs like Cedric Grolet and chocolatiers like Amaury Guichon creating impossible architectural feats out of sugar and spice, I honestly feel that they cannot actually taste all that nice.
A maple pancetta flan cake from Otera. Photo: Otera
A maple pancetta flan cake from Otera. Photo: Otera
So when I received a message recently from Otera – a boutique cake shop I had bought from before – spotlighting its new dessert tasting experience at their North Point premises on Hong Kong Island, I was struck by the simplicity of the name: Unsung.
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